Playing Games in the Myriad Worlds

Wen Jian is a restorer of ancient books. Every day, he works with old paper, paste, and worm-eaten holes. He thought the most dangerous thing he'd ever face was restoring a page from a Ming edition that had been ruined by water.

Then he woke up in front of an abandoned bell tower. Words appeared before his eyes, and a System was etched into his vision: the Myriad Worlds Game, Beginner Adaptation Scenario, mission titled "Seal the Lamp." He had 48 hours to extinguish the ever-burning lamp and seal the thing beneath it.

There were only two other people with him: a Mongolian woman who drove long-haul trucks, and a young photographer carrying a surveying pack. Inside the bell tower stood a copper oil lamp, burning with green flame. An inscription was carved into the base. One line read: Successor Lamp Keeper: Wen Jian.

He had never entered this bell tower, yet his name was on the lamp base.

A yellowed booklet was hidden in a compartment. Its author was also named Wen Jian. Chen Yuan, the third lamp keeper, had walked into this lamp decades ago, sealed his heart in a talisman, and left behind a booklet, waiting for another person named Wen Jian to come.

The lamp went out, and the evil dispersed. Wen Jian returned to his normal life: work, book restoration, meals, sleep. But the traces Chen Yuan left behind were like seeds buried in the earth, appearing in Wen Jian's hands one book at a time. The Mountain Gazetteer bore the words "The lamp is in the mountain, the mountain is in the mist." A county chronicle had "Enough" tucked inside it. The lamp base bore a label: "A gift from Chen Yuan, received by Wen Jian."

The evil was not dead. It clung to fragments of the lamp, scattered across the world. Someone picked up a base. Someone bought an old lamp. Someone kicked a piece of copper in a junk stall. The fragments were waiting for someone, waiting for the next Wen Jian.

Then one day, the office received a Qing-dynasty manuscript for restoration. He opened it to the third page. There, it read: "The lamp is in the mountain. The mountain is empty. A person enters the mountain."