I'm building the perfect territory in the mist.

Chapter 1: Welcome to the Land of Mist

"I won! I won!"

In the dead of night, on the plague-stricken plains, thick fog billowed.

The young man wore light silver-white armor and carried an old-fashioned lantern.

The light from the lantern dispelled the surrounding mist and illuminated the excited face.

"The Necronomicon, a key artifact that allows Tier 3 undead units to advance to Tier 4, recently fetched 624 million in the trading market!"

Clutching the ancient, black book in his hand, he exclaimed excitedly, "It wasn't for nothing that I fought through every branch of the military to get here. After this job, I can retire!"

"Weiwei, wait for me, I'll have the money to marry you soon."

"Mom, hang in there. I'll schedule Dr. Liu's surgery for you in a couple of days."

Just then, the thick fog around them suddenly surged without warning.

It was as if many dark figures were swimming in the fog, and the area illuminated by the lantern in his hand was being compressed smaller and smaller.

"It can't be that kind of thing, can it...?"

The young man's face turned deathly pale instantly, and a chill ran down his spine.

Puff... Puff...

A strange sound of footsteps reached my ears, like some enormous creature slowly approaching, stepping on rotting flesh.

Each muffled thud deepened the young man's fear.

The light from the lantern in his hand rapidly contracted, from ten meters to five meters, then to three meters, and finally only a small, eerie glow less than half a meter long remained.

The thick fog seemed to envelop him like an invisible hand, and a feeling of suffocation kept coming at him.

"ah!!!"

His fear exploded completely, and he ran wildly backwards without regard for anything else.

I had only taken two steps when I bumped into something cold and soft.

When he stiffly raised his head, his face had turned ashen and pale, and his pupils were wide open like those of a dead fish.

"No...don't kill me...I don't want to die..."

"puff!"

A tearing sound came from the darkness, followed by a chilling chewing sound, and the area quickly fell silent.

In the dead of night in Jiangcheng, a young man suddenly sat up in bed.

His face still bore the marks of extreme fear, his pupils trembling slightly, as if he had just experienced a nightmare.

"Maybe what they're saying on the forum is fake. It's just a game, how could you really die..."

He muttered to himself with a hint of relief, curled up in the blankets.

Tick-tock...tick-tock...

The sound of dripping water in the bathroom was especially clear in the dead of night, as time ticked by.

"Two hours have passed, I'm fine!"

The young man jumped out of bed, excitedly checking his body: "Great! Those posts on the forum were indeed fake!"

"How dare you lie to me! I'll expose you rumor-mongers!"

After saying that, he prepared to turn on his phone and log into the forum.

Just then, a piercing pain shot through his body.

Looking in the bedroom mirror, I saw a series of gruesome teeth marks that had appeared out of nowhere on my body.

It seemed as if an unseen maw was slowly and deliberately chewing his flesh.

His skin was torn, his bones made a constant cracking sound, and he felt as if he were being held in the mouth of a giant, transparent beast.

"Pfft! Pfft pfft!!"

Blood splattered, accompanied by heart-wrenching screams.

Thick fog billowed from his body, instantly filling the entire room!

The thick fog spread rapidly, soon covering the residential building, which was over twenty stories high.

Countless people are shrouded in mist in their sleep.

Deep within the fog, a massive silhouette is slowly taking shape.

...

...

"Beep—beep beep—!"

The piercing sound of police sirens cut through the night sky of Jiangcheng at five in the morning.

Shen Xing sat in his wheelchair, looking at the red and blue lights flashing by on the street outside the window, his brows slightly furrowed.

"What's going on in Jiangcheng lately? Police cars and fire trucks are sirens every day. I've never seen it this frequent before."

He turned on his phone and searched the website.

A residential building in Wuhan was shrouded in thick smoke, suspected to be due to a pipe leak. The fire department is currently en route to the scene.

An incident involving a wild animal attacking a person recently occurred at Lianhu Lake Park; the relevant departments have resolved the situation.

Shocking! Unexplained fog appears in multiple areas; meteorological experts say it may be related to recent abnormal temperatures.

Some of these news reports are true, and some are false, but they are all brief reports consisting of only a few lines.

Even when a few so-called on-site photos are included, they are very blurry, as if they have been deliberately edited.

"Coo coo..."

A rumbling sound from his stomach interrupted his thoughts.

Shen Xing pushed the wheelchair skillfully out of the bedroom and into the kitchen, where he found some frozen dumplings in the refrigerator and put them into the microwave.

"Buzz~" The phone vibrated again.

Upon opening it, a four-person discussion group named "Refined and Easygoing" was popping up on the Green Bubble chat software.

Cilantro Lover: "Hey guys, did you all receive the glasses I sent you?"

The other two people in the group chat responded that they had received the package. Shen Xing glanced at the package on the dining table in the living room and replied with an "Mm".

"These are special gaming glasses. It's said that wearing them allows you to enter a game with 99.999% realism." (A user named "Xiangcai")

"This game is still in the closed beta stage. I managed to get four spots through various channels, so please don't let me down."

Another person with a hat-wearing boy avatar and the username "Lonely Loan for Eternity" said, "Qin Lang, are you bragging? 99.999%? Why don't you say the game has come to life?"

Another user with a pink rabbit avatar, named "I Eat Eat Eat Eat," chimed in: "Yeah, there isn't a single stable VR game running in the world right now. You haven't been fooled, have you?"

The cilantro enthusiast explained, "It's true! I initially thought it was impossible, but I went in and experienced it myself last night, and the feeling was absolutely real!"

When players first enter the game, they will spawn in a small village with a campfire in the center.

"The outside is shrouded in thick fog, which is dangerous and teems with monsters. We cannot venture in lightly."

"We need to upgrade this campfire, expand the village, and upgrade more buildings."

"By the way, the system will also let you randomly select a unit type."

"I randomly encountered a regular 1-star halfling, who looks like a hobbit and can even talk to me."

Within the discussion group, as others listened to his vivid description, their doubts gradually dissipated.

Du Dai Wan Gu: "If there really is such a realistic game, then I must experience it."

"Once it goes into public beta, it will definitely become a global phenomenon."

"I'll start live streaming to make money, and maybe I can pay off my debts through this game."

I kept eating: "This sounds interesting, I'll give it a try."

Cilantro Lover asked, "Where's Shen Xing? Are you playing?"

"This realistic game might just let you experience what it's like to get back on your feet."

The discussion group fell into a brief silence.

Shen Xing also lowered his head, looking at his withered legs, a bitter smile appearing on his lips.

A few years ago, I was a fresh-faced college student who couldn't find a job, so I registered an account to deliver food.

As a result, on a rainy night, it was run over by a Dayun N6 that couldn't brake.

The good news is, he survived.

The bad news is, my leg is ruined.

The good news is that the driver who caused the accident has been found.

The bad news is that the other party didn't have insurance.

At such a young age, he had no savings and was an orphan; his life was essentially ruined.

Over the years, he has barely made ends meet with some government subsidies, and his daily activities are confined to this rented room of less than 30 square meters.

But what else can we do but live? We can't just jump, can we?

At this moment, the cilantro lover sent another message: "By the way, this game has a very high degree of freedom, and the units in it are just like real people."

"It's said that players can also recruit some very beautiful units, such as beast-eared girls, half-elves, succubi, and so on."

Upon seeing the message, Shen Xing ignored it and replied on her phone.

Spark: "I have to play! This game is so deep, I have to play it!"

Dudaiwangu: "111, is this realistic, bro?"

I kept eating and exclaimed, "Holy crap! Do you have any orcs with six-pack abs, standing 1.9 meters tall, and covered in hair? Give me ten of them!"

The three people: "..."

"Alright, enough rambling. Go in and experience it for yourselves."

The person who loves cilantro added a final message: "By the way, just one more thing, this game is very difficult and dangerous."

"I'm not entirely sure where the danger is, but when you enter the game, there's a line of red text in the cutscene that indicates it."

Upon hearing this, the other three sent a series of speechless emojis, indicating that a mere game couldn't possibly be dangerous.

Shen Xing also turned off her phone and pushed her wheelchair to the dining table.

He unwrapped the cardboard package, revealing a pair of black frameless glasses that looked ordinary and lacked any sense of technology.

"This is the gaming glasses Qin Lang was talking about? It seems so unreliable."

He picked up his glasses, pushed his wheelchair, and went to the bedroom to examine them carefully.

The more I look at it, the more I realize this thing is just a gimmick, and there's no need to waste time trying it.

But when he thought about Qin Lang's claim of 99.999% accuracy and looked at his own legs, a desire rose in his heart.

Although he comforted himself every day to live optimistically, he thought that losing a leg was just the beginning, not the end of his life.

But after years of living in this cramped rented room, waking up and being able to only stare blankly at the ceiling, that sense of despair almost seeped into my bones.

Even if it's just in a game, he wants to get back on his feet.

Taking a deep breath, Shen Xing slowly put on his glasses.

Instantly, a sharp pain shot through both temples, as if I had been pricked by two extremely thin needles!

Immediately afterwards, the scene before my eyes changed.

—The seal on this ancient, dusty land has loosened, and a thick fog permeates the world.

Monsters ravaged the land, the earth decayed, and countless villages and cities were swallowed by thick fog.

Pioneers, carrying lanterns and wielding longswords, shattered countless pale arms reaching out from the mist and lit the first campfire in the wilderness.

With the help of this faint flame, civilization preserved its last embers, and giant cities and towns rose from the ground in the mist.

[The celestial spheres converge, the rift widens, and the ancient curse descends once more.]

The cycle of mists has begun anew, and two worlds are about to face the same fate.

[Welcome, pioneers, to the Land of Mist.]

As the epic opening scenes faded, Shen Xing found himself in a dilapidated village.

A few low, dilapidated black wooden houses stood in the center of the village, a bonfire burning, thick fog billowing around the edge of the flames...

Shen Xing opened his mouth, stunned by the exquisite detail in the scene before him, and it took him a long time to come back to his senses.

"This game is so realistic!"

And as he looked down slowly, with a glimmer of hope in his eyes.

His thin, bony legs were still numb, and he sat in a simple wooden wheelchair.

"Your mom!"