When Ming Po stepped into the pitch-black darkness beyond the door, his consciousness was imdiately subrged.
In his groggy state, Ming Po seed to be dreaming.
He dread he was arguing with soone, acting so agitated that he felt entirely unlike himself.
He dread he was manipulating layer after layer of illusions, recklessly blurring the five senses of others.
He dread he was walking through a vast starry sky, while a gigantic, faceless figure looked down at him from afar.
The next mont, Ming Po jolted awake.
Splash...
It sounded as if a faucet had been left running, with the drain stopper pressed down.
He didn't know when it started, but the sound of rushing water suddenly pierced the silence.
...His head hurt.
Waves of pain throbbed from the back of his head, spreading rhythmically like a heartbeat. It felt exactly as if soone had knocked him out.
Ming Po slowly opened his eyes.
The surroundings were dim. He could only vaguely make out a blood-red sky. It looked like dusk, but the color was far deeper—even his own skin was dyed crimson.
His body was unnaturally freezing, a deep chill seeping into his bones.
It took another few seconds for Ming Po to realize he was lying in water.
His numb, sluggish brain gradually began to clear. It was like sitting on the edge of the bed, slowly rebooting after waking up groggy from low blood pressure.
Ming Po rose slightly, fumbling around in the water with his hand.
Accompanied by a tallic clink, a sudden dragging sensation tugged at his right arm.
He looked down, only to discover an icy tal chain shackled to his right wrist.
It was a right hand that felt sowhat unfamiliar to him. The muscle mass was similar, but the skin was much rougher. The fingers, in particular, showed obvious signs of age. A gold ring sat on his right ring finger.
He wore a brown sweater over thermal underwear, and thick cargo pants that had already soaked up the water, becoming heavy and freezing cold.
Ming Po had no idea how long he had been imrsed in this icy water.
Skin soaked in extre cold was already fragile. That unintentional, forceful tug had almost torn it open. The pale flesh instantly turned an angry red over a large area, transmitting a burning agony. Tiny spots of blood began to seep out, and it would likely start bleeding freely soon.
Yet Ming Po acted as if he didn't notice, reaching his hand directly into the ice water.
Soon, he fished out the object he was looking for.
A pair of cracked half-fra glasses.
Clearly, they did not belong to Ming Po.
But he calmly shook the water off the glasses and used his unshackled left hand to put them on.
Although blurry black lines and water droplets still obscured his vision, he could at least make out distant objects now.
The deep crimson surrounding him was neither sunset nor evening glow. It ca from massive floodlights. The deep red beams shone down, turning the clear, transparent water a dark crimson.
At that mont, scarlet text surfaced before Ming Po's eyes.
The words bypassed the blurry lenses entirely, appearing in crisp font right before his eyes.
[Promotion: Cri and Punishnt]
[Single-player ga. Restricted Faction: Virtue. No intruders.]
[Difficulty: 1~3 days]
[This ga restricts the initial state. No external abilities or statuses can be brought in except for Titles.]
[Roleplaying is not required in this ga, but it remains helpful for advancing the plot.]
[Warning: This ga features additional rules, Hidden Missions, and a special worldview.]
[What you need to know: If you fail in a Promotion ga, you can transform into a Host to avoid death. When your Contract Deceiver clears this ga, you will be resurrected.]
...I see.
So this is how Hosts are born...
Ming Po grew thoughtful.
He rembered Ink ntioning that if they promoted to the Azure Lead of Zhou rank, Hosts would arrive uninvited.
Looking at it now, Ink had probably died during the process of promoting to the Silver rank. Therefore, he needed soone to help him complete this Promotion ritual.
"Looking at it this way, the Promotion ritual is actually quite gentle."
The corners of Ming Po's mouth curled up slightly.
In an ordinary Ga of Deception, failure ant death. But in a Promotion ritual, that wasn't the case... there was even a second chance.
The price was having to guide newcors for a while.
The higher the Promotion rank, the more severe the penalty. It ant a lower chance of changing back and more ti spent working for free... but it was a second life nonetheless.
Once Ming Po finished reading the ga's basic introduction, the text vanished.
Imdiately after, an extrely brief plot introduction appeared before his eyes:
[You are Gu Tao, a swimming coach.]
[When you wake up, you find yourself chained in this massive swimming pool, and water has already begun to fill it.]
[The last thing you rember is opening the door to your ho after work...]
These three short lines also vanished like a phantom after Ming Po finished reading them.
Unlike in Death of the Minority, there were no ga rules or mission requirents displayed.
The current situation was already glaringly obvious—
If he couldn't find a way to escape this place, he would drown.
When Ming Po woke up, the water had already soaked through his clothes.
Right now, the water barely covered the soles of his shoes, not yet subrging his ankles. However, it had already seeped into his sneakers. The intense cold made his body shiver uncontrollably; he was likely on the verge of hypothermia.
Just then.
A deliberately altered, rough, hoarse, and eerie voice echoed from above.
"Hello, Gu Tao!"
It sounded almost like an AI-synthesized voice. "I want to play a ga with you."
For a brief mont, Ming Po thought this was so Host popping out of nowhere—as if they would jump out in the next second and yell, "Welco to the Ga of Deception, Wronged Dead."
"...Saw, really?"
Ming Po frowned in disgust. "Do you even have the copyright for that?"
"Hmph... Still in the mood to joke around. It seems you have plenty of energy, which is good..."
The voice rely chuckled coldly. "That way, we might be able to play for a long ti."
Ming Po raised his eyebrows and did not reply.
The purpose of his sarcastic remark was to test whether this was a recording or an actual live conversation.
From the looks of it, a live conversation was far more likely.
In other words, so kind of cara was watching him, and there were audio recording devices nearby.
"I hear you are quite good at swimming," the voice said. "I want to see how long you can swim.
"The depth of this pool is 2.2 ters, and it will take three hours to fill.
"Unfortunately, this chain is only 70 centiters long. This ans that if the water fills up completely, you will drown.
"Right behind you, above the pool, there is a key. It can unlock your handcuffs."
That bizarre, deep, and hoarse synthesized voice let out a low chuckle. "But to reach it, you will have to wait for the water level to rise high enough.
"At that ti, relying on the buoyancy of the water, you will have a chance to grab it."
The chain was extrely uncomfortable.
It was anchored to the floor, and it was far too short. Shackled to Ming Po's wrist, it forced him into a highly awkward posture.
The chain's length was roughly the distance from a slightly shorter adult's fingertips to the ground. But Gu Tao was not short, and with the handcuff locked around his wrist... it ant he couldn't even stand up straight.
If he forced himself to stand, he would have to hold a half-squat like a martial artist's horse stance.
But it would take three hours for the water to rise.
If he maintained such a bent posture, he would be completely drained of strength long before the water level rose.
Should he crouch down to rest then?
That was even more impossible.
The water was shockingly cold, exactly like tap water drawn in the dead of winter.
Or rather, it was a mixture of ice and water.
Currently, Ming Po's right hand was chained, aning he could not take off his clothes.
If he just crouched there, his upper garnts would quickly soak up the ice water. Staying in that condition for several hours wouldn't just give him a cold—it would trigger severe hypothermia, leading directly to death.
Moreover, crouching for too long in ice water would likely cut off circulation to his legs. Once the water level rose, he would be highly prone to cramping or falling. Being subrged in freezing water also consud a massive amount of stamina. If his strength ran out, he would have no choice but to drown right here.
—This truly was a deadly water dungeon!
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