The Account-Swapping Player

People who had been missing for years returned home one after another. Claims investigator Shen Du came to collect a payout. He stared at the first returnee for three seconds, and a panel appeared above the man's head: Outsider. Mission: Live as Chen Guoping for thirty days without being recognized by his relatives. Recognizers: 0. The 0 became a 1. That very day, Shen Du was hunted down every step of the way. When he got home late that night, his father, missing for twelve years, was sitting at the dining table. The panel read: Take Shen Du away. It turned out Earth was someone else's instance, and all those missing people who came home were outsiders wearing borrowed bodies. Shen Du, meanwhile, was an NPC who could see the panels from birth. After a player died, their panel lingered above the body for thirty seconds. If an NPC reached out and caught it, they became a player, living from then on under a dead person's identity. Using stolen identities, Shen Du made his way through one world after another. And he was never the only one to reach out during those thirty seconds.