Lin Feng receives an anonymous package containing a disc for a single-player game called Echoes of the Abyss. Its description has only one line: “Beat the game, or live inside it forever.”
He scoffs and opens it without a second thought.
The first mission: at three in the morning, listen to the “crying” in the pipes at home.
Lin Feng does as instructed. Then he hears his late mother’s voice coming from inside the pipes, humming a childhood song.
The game displays: “Tutorial mission complete. Survival mode activated.”
Now his life has become one enormous bug. Ghostly figures brush past him in broad daylight, urban legends come to life around him, and clues point to family secrets he never knew existed. While everyone else struggles to survive in the game, he exploits bugs for an unlimited supply of items and even asks the Slit-Mouthed Woman, who has chased him for three whole streets, “Hey, are you off work yet? Can I get your autograph?”
But as he gradually uncovers the glitches in this world, he realizes that the so-called “game” may actually be reality. And the last words his long-dead father left him were: “Son, run! They’re watching us from ‘over there’…”
[Warning: The final authority to interpret this game belongs to no “human.”]
