[COOLDOWN: 09...]
To everyone else in the tavern, Li Wei was nothing but a madman hugging a young Swordsman's leg. A pathetic sight. Embarrassing.
But to Li Wei, those ticking numbers were a death sentence on delay.
"Let go, you dog!"
Zhao panicked. Not from pain — but because a leg that could shatter boulders was being held in place by the bony grip of a Level 1 NPC. He wrenched his leg hard, but Li Wei didn't fight him with strength.
Li Wei fought him with gravity.
He let his knees go slack, dropping his full body weight onto the floor and dragging Zhao's leg down with him.
"Hey—!"
Zhao's balance collapsed. His standing foot slipped across the puddle of spilled wine and shattered pottery.
CRASH!
His back slammed into the wreckage of the nearest table.
[COOLDOWN: 07...]
"You little—! How dare you—" Zhao thrashed, trying to wrench himself upright, his face flushed scarlet with humiliation. His hand groped at his hip, reaching for the hilt of his sword.
Li Wei saw the movement.
His eyes swept the floorboards. A white flash amid the spreading puddle of wine. The sharpest shard of the shattered jug. He snatched it. The ceramic edge immediately sliced open his own palm, drawing blood — he didn't care.
[COOLDOWN: 05...]
Li Wei lunged forward, driving his knee down squarely onto Zhao's chest.
"Get off me, trash!" Zhao spat directly into Li Wei's face.
[COOLDOWN: 03...]
A faint yellow light began flickering at Zhao's fist. Straining against the system's countdown, desperate to break through.
Li Wei raised the bloodied shard high.
[COOLDOWN: 02...]
"System! Force activate! Override!" Zhao's voice cracked into hysteria. His eyes went wide with horror, locked onto the jagged ceramic edge descending toward the vein in his throat.
[COOLDOWN: 01...]
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
The icon above Zhao's head shifted — from dead gray back to blazing yellow.
But Li Wei's hand was one second faster.
"Time's up."
CRUNCH.
The shard punched through the skin and flesh of Zhao's neck. Hot blood erupted in a gush, washing over Li Wei's face, which had gone as cold and still as stone.
"Ghk... kkhh..."
Zhao clawed at the air. Both hands flew to his own leaking throat. His eyes bulged, staring up at Li Wei with an expression no Player had ever imagined they would need:
Absolute disbelief.
The UI above Zhao's head exploded into a cascade of chaotic red text.
[CRITICAL HIT!]
[FATAL WOUND DETECTED!]
[HP: 15%... 8%... 0%]
Zhao's body convulsed once, violently. Then went still.
His eyelids stayed open, staring blankly at the cobweb-covered ceiling of the tavern.
[TARGET ELIMINATED.]
Li Wei was panting. He was still sitting astride the body. Zhao's warm blood dripped from his chin, falling onto the Swordsman's cheeks as they slowly cooled.
He had just killed a God.
And as it turned out, a God was nothing but a pile of meat. Same as the poultry his Uncle carved up in the kitchen.
The entire tavern was dead silent. Even the flies had gone quiet.
Li Wei released the ceramic handle from his trembling hand. He looked up, chest heaving, scanning the room.
"He's... he's dead..." someone whispered, breaking the silence.
The old merchant in the corner.
"MURDERER!" a woman shrieked, scrambling backward until her spine hit the wooden wall. "He killed the Young Master! We're all going to die!"
"Have you lost your mind, Wei?!" The tavern owner burst out from behind the counter. The middle-aged man's face had gone the color of a corpse, his pointing finger shaking so hard it barely held direction. "Do you know who that was?! A disciple of the Azure Sky Sect! When they find out he died here, they will burn this village to the ground!"
"B-but... he was going to kill me..."
"Better you dead than the rest of us paying for it!"
Li Wei's world collapsed for the second time that day.
He thought he had just saved his own life. But in their eyes, Li Wei wasn't a victim who'd put down a bully. He was a plague. A threat to every breathing person left in this room.
He had no place here anymore.
His gaze dropped to the dead man's ring finger. An Inventory Ring sat there, snug on the knuckle.
Money. I need money to run. For Mother.
Ignoring the stares of revulsion and the screaming around him, Li Wei grabbed the corpse's hand and tried to work the silver ring free.
ZZZT!
"Argh!"
A blue electric discharge scorched his fingers, blistering the skin.
[ACCESS DENIED: BIOMETRIC MISMATCH]
The system rejected him. A God's possessions couldn't be touched by an NPC's dirty hands.
Li Wei gritted his teeth. Through the tavern's open door, he caught sight of the old merchant already sprinting away — almost certainly heading for the village guards.
Time was up.
Li Wei snatched a meat cleaver that had fallen from a nearby table. With a blank face and a lurching stomach, he pressed the blade against the base of Zhao's ring finger.
CRACK.
Cartilage split clean. He pocketed the severed finger — ring still on it, still bleeding — then quickly rifled through Zhao's robes, stripping out a small coin pouch and a slim leather notebook.
Then he was on his feet and gone, bursting through the back kitchen door.
"Wei..."
The cook — his Uncle — stood frozen in the back doorway.
"Uncle..."
"Go." The old man's voice shook badly. He couldn't bring himself to meet Li Wei's eyes. He stared only at the blood masking his nephew's face. "Run through the bamboo forest. Don't ever come back here. If the guards ask... I'll tell them you were dragged off by wolves."
Li Wei swallowed. It tasted like bile.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out the stolen coin pouch, and set it quietly near his Uncle's feet.
"For Mother's medicine," Li Wei said, his voice raw. "Please... make sure she takes it."
He didn't wait for an answer. He turned and disappeared into the embrace of the forest.
The Black Bamboo Forest received him with thick, lightless dark. Thorns and snapping branches tore at his skin and clothes, but Li Wei kept running. He ran until his lungs felt ready to split open.
Until at last he slid down against the roots of a massive banyan tree, collapsing.
His still-trembling hands pulled out Zhao's leather notebook.
He flipped through it frantically, hoping for a secret technique, or at minimum an escape route.
What he found was a list.
---
[QUEST LOG MANUAL — PLAYER: ZHAO]
Daily: Start a brawl at the Tavern (Complete)
Side Quest: Find the Old Healer (Complete)
Main Quest: Collect 3 Starter Village Artifacts.
---
Li Wei's eyes tracked down Zhao's messy handwriting, all the way to the final line.
---
Final Target: Sick Woman in the Northern Hut.
Objective: Forcibly take the Ancient Jade Necklace.
Note: This NPC is dying. Wait for natural death or accelerate it for item drop.
---
Li Wei's breath stopped. His body turned to ice.
Northern Hut. Sick Woman.
That was his mother.
His mother wasn't sick because of some ordinary illness. She was sick because she was holding a Quest Item. And the "God" whose throat he had just opened... had been on his way there. To kill her. To farm a necklace.
"Bastard..."
Hot tears, streaked with blood, dripped onto the pages of the notebook.
In the silence of the dark forest, beneath the gaze of a world-system as cold as dead stars, Li Wei finally understood.
They weren't Gods. They weren't heroes sent down from the heavens.
They were vermin.
