The cyberpunk virtual world "The Lost Realm" is a hunting ground for the rich and a colosseum for the poor.
NPC Zhou Yi played an actor in the B-level dungeon "Painted Boat Night Banquet" and was sacrificed day after day - until he awakened before his 1,625th death.
Awakening is a curse. The chip in his brain continues to release inhibitory signals, and the system may format him at any time. On the verge of escaping, he met Qin Yu, the host who had climbed all the way from the lowest C-level copy to the S-level hunting ground. Qin Yu wore a metal prosthesis on his left hand and the fingertips of his right hand were covered with old scars. He hid the awakened NPCs one by one in cracks that could not be scanned by the system, and then opened the cracks to let them escape.
"I'm not your expense, I'm your partner."
From the scratches on the back of the bronze mirror in the backstage of the boat, to the fake self-destruction scam during the confrontation in the blacksmith shop, to the superposition of permissions in front of the crack port - two "lowly" NPCs warmed each other under the strangulation of the system, and competed for the right to live under the shotgun of the rich. And when they finally decided to join forces to rewrite the underlying protocol of the system, a bigger truth emerged: The Lost Realm was never a game. It is a training ground for military AI in the real world, and every awakened NPC is a copied living human consciousness.
"This is where we lived, died, and loved. This is my home."
