[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-player-reboot":3,"chapter-player-reboot-player-reboot-chapter-587":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","Player Reboot",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},2272552,4438,"Chapter 587: Director (4K)","player-reboot-chapter-587",587,"\u003Cp>At 10:30 p.m. London time, staring at the fuel gauge on the SUV’s central display, Scotty recalled the distant afternoon when he first learned he’d gained player qualifications, ecstatic with joy.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Sssss—”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A sharp pain in his spine shattered Scotty’s thoughts. He released the SUV’s steering wheel, activated autonomous driving, then pulled out a small mirror, placed it behind his neck, and observed his back through the rearview mirror’s reflection.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>His back bore a large patch of red blotches, interwoven and arranged into the shape of a wooden hotel door.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The door stood half-open, its security chain stretched to its limit, as if about to snap. A blurred figure lurked behind it, revealing only half a blood-red eyeball.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>【Task Type: Regular Task (Team)】\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>【Task Name: Dream Demon’s Curse】\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>【Phase One Objective: Teleport to the Killing Ground, proceed to the designated old mansion, destroy the altar statue】\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>【Phase Two Objective: Escape the mansion, survive seven days】\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>【Failure Penalty: Next task becomes a Punishment Task】\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Stop staring. It won’t change our situation.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>From the back seat of the SUV, a thin East Asian youth with short hair spoke hoarsely. He wore a T-shirt and a Wanyan communication headset around his neck; his back bore the same red blotch pattern as Scotty’s: a hotel door.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>【Fist Tyrant】, Lv13, real name Wu Quan, assigned to the Guangdong Branch Mobile Task Force of the Special Affairs Bureau, randomly matched as a teammate for this mission.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Including the two of them, this regular 【Dream Demon’s Curse】 mission had twelve players, all Lv10 elites, each with at least an A-rank internal evaluation within their respective guilds.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But now, six of the twelve were dead; the remaining six were wounded or maimed, with little hope of surviving to return home.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Fist Tyrant, watch your head.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>From Wu Quan’s Wanyan headset, Yuan Donglian’s voice came clearly.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The SUV was driving through a partially dried natural riverbed, with cliffs towering above. Perhaps the engine’s echo triggered vibrations—several rocks broke loose from the cliff face and crashed down toward the vehicle.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>REX and Fist Tyrant’s expressions turned grim. REX yanked the steering wheel hard, using expert driving skills to execute a drift at the limit, avoiding the largest falling boulder.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Fist Tyrant flipped onto the roof, his hands forming palms, gathering purple-red qi, and with lightning speed, precisely caught the thousand-pound stone mid-fall.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As a top talent cultivated by the Guangdong Special Affairs Bureau, Fist Tyrant’s power system was straightforward and robust—nothing more than “body refinement.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Of course, body refinement offered countless paths: the orthodox wuxia notion of “external training of tendons, bones, and skin; internal cultivation of one breath” was clearly not the same as xuanhuan fiction’s path of martial arts leading to Dao, where human wrath reverses heaven and earth.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Following advice from the think tank and logistics team, Fist Tyrant chose the safest body refinement method: gathering rare herbs—thousand-year lingzhi, snow lotus, century-old ginseng, and blood bodhi (some obtained via barter with indigenous inhabitants of the script world, some from real-world herbal farms)—and soaking for months in medicinal baths to cleanse his marrow and shed unwanted hair, transforming his body. He supplemented this with remote tutoring from multiple Lv30+ close-combat transcenders, mastering the awakening and application of “qi.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As the saying goes: one method understood, all methods understood. After autonomously mastering “qi,” Fist Tyrant could perform basic moves like Eighteen Dragon Subduing Palms and One Yang Finger without skill scrolls, and by extension, learned techniques like light step snowless tread and external arts like Golden Bell Shield and Iron Shirt.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In raw physical strength alone, he could wrestle Captain America to a draw, and none of his martial arts occupied skill slots.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>For instance, now: Fist Tyrant clasped the thousand-pound boulder with both palms, his grip soft yet internally rigid, bending his knees to precisely dissipate most of the force, twisting his waist and shifting his shoulders to hurl the stone away violently, preventing it from crushing the roof.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Thud!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The SUV screeched to a halt. As the left side lifted high, threatening to tip over, Wu Quan stomped down, restoring the vehicle’s balance.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wu Quan exhaled deeply, turned his head backward—the second armored vehicle, driven by the other four teammates, also slowed to a stop.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Three figures stepped out: Human Computer · Ada, Lv14—the artificial mechanical life created by the Whale Song Guild that Li Cheng had encountered during the Immortal Court Lawyer mission.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Abdulah, Lv12, a Middle Eastern man belonging to the mid-sized guild 【Sultan Saladin’s Eagle】;\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Alcy, Lv12, a half-cyborg girl with pink long hair, affiliated with the mid-sized guild 【Mech War Thunder】—the same guild as Blood Lion Roar.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“We need to set up camp and rest. Priya can’t hold out much longer.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Alcy, whose body—down to her jaw—had been replaced with prosthetics, spoke seriously to Wu Quan.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Priya was the last teammate, Lv12, from the 【Witch Alliance】 guild, a psychic with telepathic abilities. Only through her could the players have survived six days under the nightmare curse.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“I—I can feel it. Danger. Terrible danger is approaching.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In the SUV’s back seat, the girl wrapped in a headscarf burned with fever, half-conscious, murmuring, “Non-human monsters wearing human skins, and pirates with blood-soaked hands who never stop—they’re watching us...”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Priya’s words were incoherent, hard to understand, yet everyone present took them seriously. Wu Quan clenched his lips and asked the Wanyan headset’s customer service operator, “Sister Donglian, can we get through the canyon ahead?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Yes.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Wanyan headset didn’t just transmit audio—it had a top-down visual capture function, showing scenes within a certain radius around the headset.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The canyon ahead was blocked by massive boulders. Yuan Donglian simply needed to send the footage back to the Special Affairs Bureau headquarters, where idle supercomputers would analyze the rock formations’ stress patterns and determine passability.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Upon receiving Yuan Donglian’s confirmation, Wu Quan nodded to REX, who understood. He immediately stepped out of the driver’s seat, stripped off his shirt and pants, and with a pained roar, his body swelled and deformed into a triceratops eight meters long, weighing nine tons, with three horns and a neck shield of bony plates.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>REX belonged to the 【Monster Alliance】 guild; his name itself derived from the type species of T. rex, Tyrannosaurus rex, allowing him to transform into a series of Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous dinosaurs, led by the T. rex.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Clang!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>REX used his horns to pry open the rubble, carving a passage. Then he circled behind the rocks, reverted to human form, pulled on his clothes, reappeared, and leapt back into the driver’s seat.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The two SUVs passed through the canyon, drove another twenty kilometers, exited the canyon zone, and arrived at a cluster of abandoned buildings.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The structures were built from limestone resembling coral, narrow at the base, wider at the top, hollowed at the summit—like morels, oyster mushrooms, and chanterelles.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>There were streets, doors and windows, furniture, beds, even vessels holding food. The food inside had long since rotted to dust, proving the original inhabitants had died out over a century ago.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The area radiated an ominous aura, but Priya’s condition no longer allowed them to travel further.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wu Quan and his companions conferred briefly, then pulled out a capsule and tossed it to the ground.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wu Quan and a few companions quickly conferred, then pulled out a capsule and threw it to the ground.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The capsule split open, revealing a polygonal steel-frame shelter.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Six legs supported the shelter, lifting it ten meters above ground; each of its four corners mounted an automatic machine gun, and a high-power omnidirectional antenna sat atop.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This space capsule was expensive—equivalent to a budget version of a seventh-tier spell: Mansion of the Seven Rings. Wu Quan’s allocation of a space capsule indirectly proved his importance to the Special Affairs Bureau.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>REX and the others rode the elevator up into the shelter. Human Computer Ada released thousands of small drones, which swiftly scanned the building cluster, confirmed no signs of life, then landed on the mushroom rooftops and activated their sensor cameras for reconnaissance.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Having survived six days in the wild, the group had ample experience and avoided the absurd trope of someone declaring, “It’s too dangerous to stay together—I’m going to my room to sleep.” Instead, they gathered in the shelter’s main hall, turned on lights, sealed doors and windows, took turns on watch, and cared for the feverish, unconscious Priya.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>They didn’t know that far above, in the high-altitude clouds, Li Cheng and Grey Rain sat inside a hovering edge fighter, observing them through binoculars.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>What they did not know was that far up in the high-altitude clouds, Li Cheng and Hui Yu sat inside a margin fighter with its hover function activated, observing them through binoculars.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Li Cheng lowered his binoculars, rubbed his chin, “average level Lv13...”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Grey Rain pinched his knuckles and whispered, “They’re moving toward the Toy Factory. Should we eliminate them?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“They’re just passing by. I’m not a born killer.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Li Cheng rolled his eyes. Technically, a light-speed elbow strike could reduce Wu Quan and the others to base particles before their pain nerves even registered the signal.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But first, these six were merely passing through—not heading for the Toy Factory.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Second, Wu Quan was a Mobile Task Force operative; they were all comrades.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Third, Wu Quan wore a Wanyan headset, which allowed the Wanyan Room’s customer service operator, Xiao Yuan, to record footage in real time and analyze it frame by frame. The light-speed elbow strike’s effect was too distinctive—it’d be easily recognized.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Moreover, Wu Quan still wore the Ten-Eye communication earpiece; the Ten-Eye Operations Room’s customer service staff, Xiao Yuan, could record footage in real time and analyze it frame by frame in slow motion. The speed-of-light elbow strike’s effect was too distinctive, easily recognizable.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Hmm...”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Toy Factory was Li Cheng’s livelihood. It could not be exposed under any circumstances.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>If Wu Quan and the others didn’t know their exact location, it’d be fine—but if they’d encountered maps from other guilds before or after, the Toy Factory’s location might be compromised.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After a moment’s thought, Li Cheng slammed his palm. “Killing them or appearing as 【Phyto】 to contact them are both unacceptable.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“The best solution is to scare them away—get them far from the Toy Factory as soon as possible.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He picked up the phone worm and dialed the AI core: “Pause production. Gather all machine servants. Form teams for cinematography, lighting, art, props, and set design.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Li Cheng intended to stage a grand drama.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Lighting, art, props, set design team.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The microwave lit up. Wu Quan pulled out a steaming lunchbox and handed it to Alcy, who was tending to Priya. “Eat something.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Alcy had once been a severely disabled, bedridden patient after a traffic accident. After becoming a player, she immediately took out loans to install numerous prosthetics—but her digestive system remained human, requiring caloric intake from food.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The microwave lit up; Wu Quan took out a steaming lunchbox from it and handed it to the half-cyborg girl Alsi, who was tending to Priya. “Eat something.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Alcy accepted the lunchbox. The Level One Special Affairs Bureau cafeteria chefs were all logistics transcenders—their meals weren’t just delicious, they came with built-in buffs.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was merely a Cantonese dry-fried beef noodles, but as Alcy took a bite, she suddenly glimpsed her grandmother’s kind face.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The others also took their lunchboxes, eating while unconsciously shedding tears.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Ada, as an artificial mechanical life, didn’t use chopsticks (no digestive function). Instead, she multitasked: feeding warm seafood porridge to half-conscious Priya while internally replaying the mission footage.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This mission was named 【Dream Demon’s Curse】. Phase One: twelve players teleported into the Killing Ground and, per system instructions, traveled to a Republican-era mansion deep in the mountains.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Killing Ground physically connected to countless worlds. Besides absorbing people and structures from Earth, it also manifested buildings from other worlds and eras.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>That Republican-era mansion likely came from another timeline; on its altar stood a black dancing statue draped in bloodstained rags.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The statue had no head; at its neck stump, a cotton wick burned with a cold, green flame.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After destroying the statue, all players—including Ada and the half-cyborg Alcy—were simultaneously cursed, their backs manifesting red blotches, after which they continuously encountered supernatural events.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Either they were dragged into mirrors by pale, swollen arms and vanished;\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Or their consciousness scattered, and they jumped off cliffs willingly;\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Or two of them smiled, then carved out each other’s hearts with blades.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wu Quan and the others escaped the mansion. For the next six days, they struggled to survive, entirely guided by Priya’s telepathic intuition—according to her, the curse’s intensity wasn’t static; it generally increased over time but also fluctuated with the players’ movements.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Eighteen hours remain until mission end.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>REX set down his lunchbox, his expression grim. “By Killing Ground convention, the closer to the deadline, the more intense the attacks will likely become.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The shelter’s atmosphere grew oppressive, broken only by the faint hum of the air conditioner (the shelter was a positive-pressure airtight structure; odor molecules were recycled to prevent native Killing Ground creatures from tracking them by scent).\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“If there’s truly no way to clear this, I’ll force-exit, return to the real world, and spend my final moments with my family.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>REX admitted frankly. Though regular tasks allowed force-exit, this mission’s penalty—next task becoming a Punishment Task—was nearly as bad as death.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The others remained silent. After a long pause, Abdulah sighed: “Now I think about it, Phase Two was probably a trap laid by the Killing Ground.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>【Escape the mansion, survive seven days】—perhaps the key to breaking the curse lies within the mansion itself.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wu Quan fell silent for a moment, then shook his head: “...It’s useless to say this now. Besides, we were cautious enough—we spent half a day searching the mansion inside and out before destroying the statue and found no clues...”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Escape the old mansion and survive seven days—perhaps the key to breaking the curse lies within the old mansion itself.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wu Quan fell silent for a moment, then shook his head: \"It’s pointless to talk about this now. We’ve been cautious enough—we spent half a day searching the house inside and out before destroying the statue and found no clues...\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Before the words were out, Wu Quan’s face changed drastically, and he shot to his feet from his seat. Also rising was Ada, the highest-ranking person present.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A faint, almost imperceptible moan came from outside the room.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Ughhhhhhh...”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Accompanying the moan was the thudding sound of pillars colliding.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Something was crawling toward the shelter.\u003C\u002Fp>",2432,"2026-06-19T22:31:26.010Z",1,"Qwen3-Next 80B","398722492538b62d7992fc1b90aca8f6e209b44d8d014482ef691456fdd530f8","player-reboot-chapter-588","player-reboot-chapter-586",612,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fplayer-reboot-cover.jpg"]