Li Ang was sitting in his living room.
"Hey, System? System? Are you there?"
Silence. No response whatsoever.
"Main God Space? System Elf? The old man in the ring? The mastermind behind the scenes?"
No matter how Li Ang called out, the narrator who had just been introducing things to him did not reappear.
At this moment, Li Ang was dressed in a yellow sanitation worker's uniform, complete with a hat and mask. He wore two pairs of latex gloves on his hands and black non-slip rain boots on his feet.
Next to the rain boots sat a beige plastic bucket. Inside it were a mop, a rag, and half a bucket of bloody water—the fur and bones of the strange cat floated among the blood.
After killing the human-faced cat, Li Ang had immediately run home to retrieve this set of equipment, specifically designed for destroying corpses and erasing evidence. He then ran downstairs, pretending to be a sanitation worker, to clean up the scene. Fortunately, this residential complex was old, with no surveillance cameras in the hallways, and hardly anyone ever passed by.
Li Ang thought for a long time, then slapped an almond-colored glass bead, the size of a thumb, onto the table.
[Name: Strange Eye]
[Type: Wearable]
[Quality: Rare]
[Special Effect: Detect illusions, create illusions. The effectiveness, range, and duration of the illusion are determined by the wearer's spiritual power.]
[Requirement: The wearer must have an anatomical eye socket structure.]
[Note: Everchanging and adaptable, those who can transform and deceive are called shape-shifters and illusionists.]
This hard glass bead was the strange cat's right eye. When Li Ang looked at the bead, lines of text describing it appeared before him.
Recalling the advertisement for the game 'Greedy Blue Moon,' Li Ang muttered softly, "Hello everyone, I am Zha Zha Hui, this is the brand new version of the game you've never played before. The first charge is only one penny, you start with a knife that does 999 damage, god-tier equipment drops like crazy, and equipment is instantly credited upon recycling, letting you casually spend tens of thousands as you wish."... Has this world really become a game? If it is a global server virtual online game, then I must be a non-pay-to-win, non-lucky player who started on Hell difficulty.
He had been orphaned at a young age, growing up in an orphanage from the age of seven. At sixteen, he left the orphanage to join society and was now working part-time while continuing his studies.
Normally, children in an orphanage without physical disabilities or serious illnesses were priority candidates for adoption. However, Li Ang had remained "unsold" over the years for two reasons.
First, he was a bit older when he arrived at the orphanage and was precociously aware, remembering things clearly. Second, Li Ang's mind was broad and active, he was full of initiative, and his cheerfulness bordered on... somewhat odd.
From a young age, Li Ang had demonstrated logic and reasoning skills far beyond his peers.
The orphanage had a collection of books donated by people from all walks of life. Li Ang, who loved to read, accurately deduced after finishing "Grimms' Fairy Tales" that Snow White's troubled fate was due to the many villains surrounding her.
Upon reading the story of Sima Guang breaking the vat, the clever Li Ang thought one could simply place firewood under the vat and light it. Once the water boiled away, the child trapped inside would naturally be safe, and the vat itself would remain intact—achieving two goals with one action.
The orphanage sometimes organized movie viewings. After watching the classic film "The Last Emperor," the clever Li Ang deduced from a genetic standpoint that the sons of eunuchs must also be eunuchs.
When TV reporters came to the orphanage for interviews, they asked the children about their wishes.
Other children hoped to be adopted soon or to receive gifts like dolls or toy cars.
Yet Li Ang, during a live TV broadcast, expressed his wish for the orphanage to take in thirty or forty more sets of twin orphans so he could play a real-life matching game.
As for behaviors like yelling at a broken electric fan, "If you don't spin, you're not Chinese!"; calling for everyone to wear two pairs of underwear in winter for warmth; not removing socks while washing feet to save time on washing socks; or taking a teacher on a home visit to a trash pile and saying, "My place is too messy, please sit wherever you like"—these were all minor quirks.
The saying goes that eccentrics have expansive minds, and the simple-minded are often cheerful. Li Ang, exceptionally intelligent as he was, certainly left a profound impression on prospective adoptive parents.
As the other saying goes, "Geniuses to the left, lunatics to the right." Li Ang, who would even part his own buttocks to muffle a fart, stood squarely on the dividing line between genius and madness. When he left the orphanage, the director predicted that Li Ang would either appear on television as a successful public figure or as a heinous criminal on a true crime show.
However, now that the abnormal was invading reality, the director's predictions might be shattered.
According to the 'game voice-over' I just heard, Li Ang thought, the cat that killed Elderly Zhang is also a player. Combining this with the various urban legends circulating recently, it seems this 'real game' has been underway for some time.
How is this game played? How do players communicate with the System? Do they need to complete tasks for rewards? What kind of tasks? Grinding monsters, hunting for treasure?
During this time, how many people or animals have become players? Are official or third-party organizations aware of this?
If they are, then based on the information that 'players are eligible to access and acquire extraordinary powers' and 'non-players who kill players can obtain player status,' some organizations might have already started premeditated searches for players among ordinary people...
A sense of crisis loomed, yet the potential System Elf still hadn't appeared.
"Let's just wait and see," Li Ang muttered, his expression dark and unsettled after a long period of contemplation. He then picked up the glass bead and held it to his face.
This glass bead was arguably the only trophy he had obtained from the strange cat.
...Wearers must have an anatomical eye socket structure...
As soon as the almond-shaped eye from the strange cat touched Li Ang's eyelashes, an invisible suction force emerged. POP. The glass eye inserted itself into Li Ang's eye socket at an eerie angle.
"Damn, that was sudden?" Li Ang exclaimed, startled. However, the intense discomfort he had feared did not materialize.
He quickly snatched up a mirror. His reflection was the same as ever, except his left eye now had a cat-like, almond-shaped vertical pupil.
Eerily similar to the endangered emo subculture, he thought.
Mammalian retinas contain rod cells and cone cells, Li Ang recalled. The former are sensitive to brightness but lack color perception and are responsible for night vision, while the latter can detect both light intensity and color. Humans have a rod to cone cell ratio of 4:1, while cats have a 25:1 ratio. This means cats have stronger night vision but weaker color discrimination. From a color vision perspective, my left eye hasn't changed to only differentiate between blue, green, yellow, and purple like a cat's. However, in terms of light sensitivity, my left eye's vision in dim environments has greatly improved.
Calmly assessing his situation, Li Ang reflected further, More data about this eye needs to be tested with specific instruments. According to the item's description, it should also have the ability to create illusions...
Li Ang closed his eyes and concentrated, attempting to use the Illusion Technique to reconstruct the spatial structure of the living room and achieve the Ghost-Hitting-Wall effect he had witnessed earlier.
In the process, threads of his spiritual power slowly drained away.
After a while, Li Ang opened his eyes, somewhat fatigued. The living room was still the same, though the air rippled slightly.
I can't construct the Ghost-Hitting-Wall structure yet. Is it because my spiritual power isn't strong enough?
Li Ang felt a hint of disappointment. He held his breath, concentrated, and once again began visualizing simpler objects.
Forks, spoons, pots and pans, textbooks, chairs, alarm clocks, televisions, refrigerators, sewing machines...
Within minutes, the living room was filled with a variety of miscellaneous items. A faint, barely perceptible mist floated on their surfaces. On closer inspection, they seemed somewhat distorted, but from a distance, they could certainly fool someone.
Empty basin produces a snake, empty cup yields wine... It looks like I could be considered a Qigong master, a magic boy, huh?