The Years NPCs Pretended to Be Players

Xuanzhi was a notorious playboy of the Xuyu Sect. One day he stole talismans from the Seventh Elder, the next he dug up the Ninth Elder's herbs. He teased cats and walked dogs, doing everything except cultivating immortality.

Then one day, he suddenly realized that something was wrong with everyone in the sect.

The Seventh Elder, who carried a horsetail whisk, had become a heartless talisman-making machine. The Second Senior Brother, who ran the administrative hall, had become an alchemy fanatic. The unstudious Ninth Senior Brother was obsessed with roasting chickens.

These people kept repeating the same two or three lines. The whole Xuyu Sect seemed to have become an absurd nightmare.

Xuanzhi endured the nightmare for three years before he finally couldn't take it anymore. He decided to steal the Xuyu Sect's most precious treasure and live freely on his own.

But the moment the treasure was in his hands, a voice suddenly rang out in his mind.

[Ding-dong! New area, Luolanzhou of the Yunhai Eleven Provinces, is now open. Affiliated areas: Xuyu Sect, Sanxi Town, Guiyun Secret Realm... Players, explore to your heart's content! Current world exploration: 51%.]

At that sound, the false world began to move.

Guided by the treasure, Xuanzhi realized that he was an NPC in a game, a nameless passerby who had nothing to do with any of the game's storylines.

His worldview collapsed overnight. Xuanzhi fell into thought. Xuanzhi grew restless. Xuanzhi joined in.

The next day, at the entrance to the beginner instance in the beginner village of Sanxi Town outside the Xuyu Sect, a handsome young man smiled. "Hey, bro, want to run a dungeon?"

*

The full-dive online game Immortal Path became a huge hit right from its public launch. Its open-world label made it a perennial favorite in the gaming world, and increasing the world's exploration level was one of the main goals for most players.

It took the major player guilds five years of hard work to push world exploration past the halfway mark. They were ready to celebrate as if the whole world were joining in.

The world exploration quests were famously difficult. Then a player named Xuanzhi appeared out of nowhere, clearing the entire quest series in eight hours and casually killing a map boss to push exploration up by a full five percent.

Xuanzhi: Yuck, yuck, this boss meat tastes awful.

All players: ???

[818: Is that newbie in Luolanzhou actually a game GM?]

Game company: ??? We're innocent!

*

In its sixth year of operation, the full-dive online game Immortal Path finally reached its final chapter. All the players watched excitedly as the System announced the final quest: "Slay the Immortals."

Then a beam of golden light fell on someone in the crowd, and a health bar with a question mark appeared before everyone's eyes.

An unofficial member of the major player guilds, the uncrowned king of the PVP rankings, the biggest celebrity in Immortal Path, a fake player and a real NPC: Xuanzhi slowly blinked. "Oh, is it me?"

All players: ???

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