Hidden in City A is a ghost market that no one knows about.
It is an inescapable cycle with no solution. Ordinary people are forcibly dragged into eerie spaces, where completing one hundred commissions is the sole requirement for clearing the game. Health points are equivalent to money. Staying alive and buying supplies and tools all cost health points. Your total health only determines whether you live or die, and how rich or poor you are; it never affects your eligibility to clear the game. The ghost market enforces a rule that transports people every seven days. No one can escape. Only by completing all one hundred commissions can they break free.
Those who fail become the Forgotten, trapped forever in an endless loop at the moment of their death. Those who avoid their tasks are completely erased by unseen overseers.
The ordinary teenager Du He accidentally falls into the ghost market. He possesses a unique talent for precise calculation, and uses it to plan carefully and find a way to survive in this deadly place. Upon entering, he figures out the rules governing health points, buys tools for self-defense, and steadily builds up his strength to stay alive.
On his solitary journey, he meets Jiang Huai, a healer driven by an obsession with finding his mother; Jiang Yi, an item merchant determined to find his younger sister; Nan Min, a sensor who can perceive the ghost market's inner workings; and Yuetan, a sacrificer who trades memories for strength. The five form a team, each playing their part and having one another's backs as they work together to overcome countless perilous commissions.
Step by step, they uncover the ghost market's many secrets. Those locked into tasks by the System are hiding something. What seems like a successful escape is actually a trap. Everyone who clears the game is a copy, while their original selves become nourishment for the ghost market. The coldhearted overseers are all former players whose minds have been altered.
The truth about DH, the creator of a parallel world, and the ultimate crisis of the collapsing real world follow one after another.
Faced with a binary fate of life or death, Du He uses his extraordinary calculations to find a third path no one else could have imagined.
He merges with the System and rewrites the ghost market's rules through one hundred commissions, abolishing the execution edicts and ending the old order that devours people.
As the cage of despair becomes a place of warmth, and the terror of endless cycles becomes a journey they face together,
he completes all one hundred commissions and successfully clears the game, returning to the ordinary world, yet chooses to go back against the current.
City A is both a bustling metropolis and a gentle ghost market.
After enduring countless hardships, the five finally find a place to belong. With ordinary human bodies, they protect the peace between the two worlds.
Theme: Keep your true self in the depths of despair, and even a solitary journey can lead you to companions. Though fate may bind you and the rules may be unjust, face the challenge with solitary courage and save the world with kindness. Break free of your shackles and turn your fate around, protecting a glimmer of light in the darkness and staying true to your bonds through every cycle.
