Shen Mo is the most forgettable shop assistant at the Hundred Herb Hall in Qingyun City, a totally transparent NPC in the players’ eyes: no dialogue, no quests, no presence. He knows nothing about cultivation, has no spiritual root, and his only backer is the lie-flat-and-wait-to-die Qingxuan Zhenren. His only skill is tending the shop and selling pots, bowls, and cinnabar.
Then his ancestral jade pendant shatters, and a bamboo scroll of the Heavenly Dao appears in his mind. Players’ IDs, cultivation levels, combat power, and demonic corruption levels, even words like “dungeon,” “grinding mobs,” and “quitting the game,” all become secrets he can see through.
[ID: One Slash 999] Killed Little Bean? Shen Mo can see that their demonic corruption is at 78%, and spot a weakness in the ebb and flow of spiritual energy, allowing him to lay a deadly trap within the players’ own rules.
[ID: Tiger Slayer Tonight] Combat power: 180,000? He can follow underground passageways into Tianji City and use ordinary human methods to topple the players’ game board, along with the lot who treat the world like a playground.
He’s an NPC dismissed as background scenery, yet he holds a player interface that lets him see everything.
So what if his combat power is only 2? This time, he’ll show every player that NPCs make the rules of the game.
