Cheng Xubo, who had been huddled under a bed, saw Chi Lian vanish and scrambled out, frantically searching the spot where she had been. As a fellow player, he immediately connected the dots.

“Chi Lian logged out?! Can we actually log out now?”

Trembling with excitement, he summoned his system panel, but the “Exit Game” button was nowhere to be found. His hope was extinguished as quickly as it had ignited. He sat on the floor, staring blankly. “Why can’t I leave?”

At that moment, the entire sanitarium remained frozen. Neither the Apostle nor Yao Wangping could move; even the corrupting influence of Big Eye could not penetrate the golden dome. Cheng Xubo sat there sobbing, but for the first time, his negative emotions didn’t trigger a surge of pollution. He was safe, and perhaps his tears were as much a release of suppressed terror as they were a lament.

The moment the Ego Totem stabilized, Mu Sichen’s body returned to its human form. The hideous blisters vanished, his bulging eyes receded into their sockets, and he transformed back into a clean-cut, handsome university student.

He opened his own panel. The “Exit Game” button was glowing.

He realized then that the initial ten-minute “Newbie Protection Period” at the start of the game was actually the only genuine window players were given to leave—but what player would walk away then? Everyone treated those ten minutes as a “get out of jail free” card, using the time to explore the world as deeply as possible.

Unlike Chi Lian, Mu Sichen didn’t rush to log out. He used this reprieve to explore his newly acquired Pillar. He looked up through the hole the Apostle had smashed in the ceiling, gazing at the totem hovering in the air.

If he was right, this was his Pillar now. But the power within it wasn’t his own; it was power he had “mined” from Big Eye.

The skill “Undermine” was far more versatile than he had imagined. Followers, abilities, Pillars… it wasn’t just about digging into a “wall”; it was about seizure, theft… or more accurately, transfer.

When he “mined” followers, he hadn’t taken them for himself; he had transferred them from Big Eye to Qin Zhou, and then back again. Even Chi Lian’s “Cut and Paste” and Cheng Xubo’s “Handcart” were, at their core, variations of the same theme: transfer.

This bothered him. In a standard game, a balanced system offers variety—attack, support, healing, defense. But My Ideal Town seemed to give players only one fundamental ability: the power to shift things from point A to point B. Why?

Mu Sichen pushed the question aside. He had a feeling that even if he left now, he would be back. He had completed the newbie mission, but he had only bought himself a moment of breath.

He looked at the sky. Big Eye’s Pillar had been hidden deep within the sanitarium’s logic. Clearly, a visible Pillar was an easy target for other god-level entities to plunder. If his totem stayed hanging over the roof like a neon sign, Big Eye would simply snatch it back the moment He woke up.

He needed to hide it. He checked the system panel and found a red exclamation mark in the quest log.

[Congratulations on obtaining your first Pillar! Please find a “Mental Anchor” for your Pillar to protect and hide it.]

“If I hadn’t seen this and just logged out… what would have happened?” Mu Sichen muttered.

[System: A newborn Pillar is extremely fragile. If the player logs out without anchoring it, god-level monsters will reclaim it instantly. Upon your next login, you would be devoured by the void for losing your only foothold.]

“And you weren’t going to tell me that unless I looked?”

The system remained silent.

Mu Sichen was torn. He couldn’t tell if this system was benevolent or malicious. It dragged people into a nightmare, hid the exit, and left them to rot unless they actively poked at the interface. Yet, it provided the very tools needed to survive. It was like a master who gave you a legendary manual but no teacher—if you learned it, you were a god; if you messed up, you were just another dead body in a long line of failures. The system wasn’t “good”; it was simply selecting the survivors.

Mu Sichen walked over to the weeping Cheng Xubo. “Stop crying.”

“Chi Lian got out, why can’t I?” Cheng Xubo sobbed. “You’re still here too. Is this game sexist? Why only her?”

“It’s not sexism,” Mu Sichen said. “It’s ‘faithism.'”

“What?”

“This is a Safe House I established. I think only those who ‘believe’ in me can use it to leave.”

“I believe! I totally believe!” Cheng Xubo shouted. “You saved me! I’d believe in a rock if it got me out of here! How do I do it?”

Mu Sichen checked his pockets and realized with a jolt of embarrassment that he had used every single Ego Sticker to establish the Pillar. He had been so close to madness that he’d just thrown everything at the problem. He had no stickers left to convert Cheng Xubo.

Under Cheng Xubo’s desperate gaze, Mu Sichen looked away. “You need an Ego Sticker to become a follower. And I’m fresh out.”

“Can’t you use your skill?” Cheng Xubo pointed at the volunteers. “Use it on them!”

At Level 10, Mu Sichen’s MP had soared to 5,000. Lending Chi Lian 120 MP for a swap was nothing now. Converting a volunteer usually cost about 3,000 MP—he had enough for one.

“I don’t think I should,” Mu Sichen said.

It was a strange intuition. If he used “Undermine” now, using his own energy, that person would become his follower. But he felt a deep resistance to it. These people weren’t from his world. Forcing them to follow him felt… wrong. He could use the skill to free them from Big Eye or give them to Qin Zhou, but he couldn’t bring himself to conscript them.

Self-determination, he thought. The stickers were called “Ego Stickers.” The power was named “Self.” How could he call it “Self” if he was overwriting someone else’s will?

He looked up at the totem. It had come from his own palm. He felt he could command it. “Let’s try that instead,” he said, pointing at the ceiling.

“Try what?”

“Climbing up!”

They stacked hospital beds until they could reach the roof. Standing on top of the building, Mu Sichen saw that the totem was hovering very low, suppressed by the lingering weight of Big Eye’s domain. It was actually sinking. If he left it like this, it would eventually clip through the roof and hit the floor.

“It’s dropping fast,” Cheng Xubo noted. “I can almost touch it.”

Cheng Xubo jumped, his fingertips brushing the golden hands of the totem.

[Congratulations! Player has gained a second Follower. Follower count is too low for new features. Please continue to expand your ‘startup’ during this phase.]

Mu Sichen reached up as well. As his fingers touched the light, a surge of warmth flooded his body. He closed his eyes and whispered a single word:

“Purify.”

The totem emitted a gentle, pulsing glow. Through his left eye, Mu Sichen saw the blisters vanish from everyone in the sanitarium—patients and family alike. Shen Jiyue’s face cleared. Yao Wangping’s distorted half-body smoothed out. Even the dark miasma within Cheng Xubo evaporated.

“Check your panel now,” Mu Sichen said.

Cheng Xubo felt a sudden, inexplicable sense of trust toward the young man beside him. He opened his panel and yelled, “It’s there! The button is lit! See ya, Mu! I hope we never see this hellhole again!”

With a wave, he vanished.

Mu Sichen remained. Through the totem, he could feel that the purification wasn’t perfect. The Volunteers remained physically mutated—those were structural changes, not just surface pollution. He could also feel the presence of “trash” that needed to be cleared—entities whose corruption was too deep.

“Expel,” Mu Sichen whispered.

A wave of force swept through the building. Apostle Feather-Eye, Yao Wangping, Shen Jiyue, and a dozen others were physically “swept” out of the sanitarium and dumped into the fog outside.

He was surprised by the number of infiltrators. He wondered how many were Qin Zhou’s and how many belonged to other powers, like the Lord of Night-Bloom from the Town of Specters.

With the building cleared, he felt the totem’s energy beginning to flag. Like any Pillar, it needed a constant source of mental energy to survive. He needed to find a “Mental Anchor”—a concept for the town to live by.

“What kind of anchor?” he mused.

[System: If the player were a god-level monster, what kind of town would you want?]

“I want to go home and never come back,” Mu Sichen said. “It’s a dream, but people need hope, don’t they?”

He paused. “I’m not a god. I’m just a college student. I don’t even know if I’ll get a job after graduation or when I’ll ever be able to afford a house. But even so… you have to have hope.”

Hope for a better life. Hope for love. Hope to become someone worthwhile.

As he spoke, the totem shattered into a million points of light, sinking into the hearts of everyone remaining in the building.

[Player has named the territory: Hope Town. Please continue your efforts to build Hope Town.]

“So the game goes on,” Mu Sichen sighed.

He felt the Pillar tuck itself away, safely anchored for now. He was exhausted. He clicked “Exit Game.”

The next moment, he was back in his dorm room. The gaming pod was gone. He was lying on the cold, hard floor.

He checked his phone. The time was exactly the same as when he had entered. In the real world, not a single second had passed. Only his mechanical watch, which was now several hours ahead, proved that the nightmare had been real.

He tried to summon the system in his mind, but nothing happened. No panel, no interface. It was as if the connection had been severed.

“Did I really make it back? Do I never have to go back?” he whispered hopefully.

He pushed himself up from the floor, but as he sat up, something slid off his chest and thudded onto the linoleum.

Mu Sichen looked down. There, lying on the floor where he had just been, was a palm-sized, chibi-style plushie of a purple octopus.

Author’s Note:

Qin Zhou: Yay! Mu Sichen brought me home!

Mu Sichen: Why the hell did this thing follow me back?