Flipped over so abruptly, the octopus plushie seemed to take offense. It pulled its seven remaining tentacles into a tight ball—tucking them away like a cat tucking its paws—and settled into the bottom of the backpack, as still and silent as a common toy.

Mu Sichen rubbed his healed arm, his gaze lingering on the space where the eighth tentacle used to be. Whether or not Qin Zhou was a cold deity didn’t matter; this small avatar had gained humanity because of him, and it had sacrificed a limb to save him. Mu Sichen felt a mixture of profound gratitude and an aching heaviness in his chest.

I wonder if it will grow back, he thought wistfully.

Thanks to the octopus’s intervention, Mu Sichen felt better than ever. He shouldered his pack and struck out toward the Breeding Grounds. Since no one had escorted them to their quarters, they were navigating purely based on the directions the gatekeeper had given them: Energy to the east, Assembly to the west, Breeding to the north, and the main gate to the south.

As he headed north, he encountered a man walking toward him with a look of smug, post-coital satisfaction. Judging by the vibrant colors on his badge, he was another “High-Level” employee from the Energy Zone.

Mu Sichen stopped him, adopting a casual, curious tone. “Hey brother, I’m new here. You look like you’re having a great time—anything good up ahead?”

“Heh, the Virtual Experience Center,” the man said, giving Mu Sichen a ‘you-know-the-vibe’ look. “The kind of place that makes a man very, very happy.”

“What’s the point if it’s virtual?” Mu Sichen asked, feigning disdain.

“It looks real, it feels real… so it’s real enough for me,” the man countered. “Only us Energy Zone staff get access. Those low-lifes in Assembly and Breeding will probably live their whole lives without ever knowing that kind of ecstasy.” He chuckled proudly. “I’m wiped out. Heading back for a nap. Have fun, kid!”

Mu Sichen continued for five minutes until he reached a storefront covered in suggestive posters. The sign read Virtual Experience Center, with a subtitle in smaller print: Regardless of gender, we satisfy every desire. An experience that transcends reality.

In high school, Mu Sichen had been a straight-A student who avoided romance to focus on his studies. Shortly after graduation, his parents had died in an accident, and he’d spent every moment since scraping by. He might look mature, but at his core, he was still an innocent student. The description on the sign made his face flush crimson, and he practically jogged past the entrance to avoid looking at it.

As he hurried past, he saw several Followers—identifiable by their uniforms—exiting the center with wide grins. Apparently, the guards enjoyed the perks of the elite as well.

Twenty minutes later, he reached the perimeter.

A massive electrified fence, at least fifteen meters high, loomed before him. Occasionally, a stray insect would flutter into the mesh, vanishing into a puff of ash with a sharp crack of high voltage. A sign hung on the wire: LOW-LEVEL BREEDING ZONE. HIGH-LEVEL STAFF PROHIBITED.

Through the humming wire, Mu Sichen could see vast stretches of farmland and what appeared to be cattle and sheep pens. So the “Breeding Grounds” actually lived up to the name—they were growing crops and raising livestock. The food they ate in town was real.

The discovery sent his thoughts into a whirl. He had assumed Big Eye simply conjured bread out of some eldritch void. The idea of an Outer God organizing a municipal farming operation was bizarrely domestic.

“Move it, move it!” a voice barked. “Can’t you read the sign? High-level staff stay away from the low-level muck. Don’t degrade yourself!”

A Follower in a supervisor’s uniform approached. Even with the lethal fence, the perimeter was heavily guarded. Mu Sichen spotted a small guard shack nearby—the sentry’s post.

“I was just looking,” Mu Sichen said.

“Nothing to see. Just a bunch of expendable husks,” the guard sneered. His contempt was all-encompassing; it covered the workers behind the fence, and it clearly extended to Mu Sichen as well.

Mu Sichen watched the guard’s expression and took a deliberate step forward.

The guard instantly whipped a nine-sectioned scourge from his belt—the weapon was inlaid with dozens of blinking eyes. He cracked it against the ground between Mu Sichen and the fence.

“It’s because of you ‘rebellious’ elites that I have to stand out here for three hours a day. And now that the ‘Night’ has been extended by two hours, my shift is three and a half! Half an hour of extra work because of you lot!” the guard fumed.

Mu Sichen mentally crunched the numbers. “Four of you on a rotation?”

“What’s it to you? Get lost! Linger here for ten minutes and I have the right to demote you to Assembly!”

Mu Sichen didn’t push his luck. He offered a polite apology and walked away. The guard straightened his collar with a triumphant huff and whistled his way back to the shack, his posture radiating a sickening sense of superiority.

Mu Sichen watched him for a moment, a knowing smile tugging at his lips, before heading back to the office.

A short while later, Chi Lian returned. She looked livid, as if she were ready to tear someone apart. The moment she saw Mu Sichen, she dropped all pretense of composure and shrieked, “I am so mad! I am absolutely fuming!”

Mu Sichen chuckled. Before she could launch into a tirade, he guessed, “Guard treated you like trash?”

“How did you know?” she snapped. “Did you run into one of those arrogant pricks too? My god, you wouldn’t believe the way he spoke to me. He was looking so far down his nose I thought he’d tip over!”

Cheng Xubo walked in just then. He looked equally grim, though his anger was more subdued.

Chi Lian didn’t stop. “I went to the main gate and asked if I could go home early since I finished my work. You know what the guard said? He said, ‘Commoners will always be commoners—we give you world-class entertainment and you’re too stupid to enjoy it.’ I haven’t heard anyone use the word ‘commoner’ outside of a period drama! Who does he think he is?”

“And that’s not even the worst part,” she continued. “I was just talking to him through the guard window, and he started wiping the glass right in front of me. Like my breath was polluting his view!”

“You got the ‘trash’ treatment too?” Cheng Xubo chimed in. “Same here.”

Cheng Xubo explained that he had headed west to the Assembly Zone. Unlike the Breeding Grounds, there was no electric fence, only a thick glass wall. On one side was the luxury of the Energy Zone; on the other was the sterile grind of Assembly. The workers there could look right through at them.

He noted that the work didn’t actually look physically grueling. The machines were fully automated—wheat went in one end, and finished loaves popped out the other. It was a marvel of engineering that handled a dozen steps in one go. The workers’ only job was to push the carts of food to a pickup point for the Followers to distribute.

As a programmer, Cheng Xubo had been fascinated by the machinery. But when he moved closer to the glass for a better look, a guard had whipped him.

“The guard told me he had the power to demote me on the spot,” Cheng Xubo said, rubbing his shoulder. “I didn’t fight back. I just swallowed it and came back. I feel useless—I didn’t find out anything, I just got bullied.”

“Me too,” Chi Lian sighed.

“Who says we didn’t find anything?” Mu Sichen said calmly. “Based on what you’ve told me, I think I’ve mapped out the logic of this place.”

They both looked at him, eyes wide with renewed interest.

“I’ve realized that this entire facility is powered by a suffocating sense of Superiority,” Mu Sichen explained. “The Followers look down on High-Level staff, High-Level staff look down on Mid-Level, and Mid-Level looks down on the Low-Level breeders. It’s a literal pyramid of contempt.”

“Okay, but how does that help us?” Chi Lian asked.

“What does a Pillar need to function?” Mu Sichen asked.

“Despair?” Cheng Xubo guessed.

Mu Sichen shook his head. If he hadn’t claimed a Pillar himself, he might have assumed they were all the same. But the system had told him to find an “emotional anchor” for the sanitarium. That proved that every Pillar feeds on a different frequency of human experience.

The sanitarium was built on inescapable despair. But the factory? It hummed with the thrill of being ‘better’ than the person below you. This Pillar didn’t want sadness; it wanted the high of looking down on others.

“Then the strongest superiority must be in the Energy Zone,” Chi Lian said, looking crestfallen. “So the Pillar is right here? Did Shen Jiyue lie to us? Can a man that hot really be a liar?”

“He didn’t lie about the location,” Mu Sichen clarified. “The Pillar isn’t necessarily where the most superior people are. It’s located at the point where the collective superiority of the entire factory is projected.”

“The Breeding Grounds,” Cheng Xubo realized. “Everyone looks down on the breeders. So, what did Shen Jiyue hide from us?”

“He hid the fact that High-Level staff can be fast-tracked to Assembly,” Mu Sichen said. “He led us to believe we had to wait out a vacation for weeks. In reality, the Followers’ sense of superiority comes from their power to punish us. If we break the rules, they can force us into the pods, strip our emotions, and throw us straight into the Assembly line as a penalty.”

“Why hide that?” Chi Lian asked.

Mu Sichen frowned. “I’m not sure yet. We’re competitors now, so it makes sense for him to withhold the ‘skip’ button. But does his plan rely on us staying here? Or is he trying to reach the Pillar before we find a way to bypass the emotional cost?”

As he pondered, a sudden, cold chime rang in his mind.

[Warning: Player has lost a potential follower.]

Mu Sichen froze. Potential follower?

[Recalling ‘Self-Sticker.’ Please check your inventory.]

He opened his system interface. Nestled in his bag was a “Self-Sticker”—the drawing on it was blurred and unrecognizable. Mu Sichen had only made three like this: one for himself, one for Chi Lian, and one for the player he’d found crying in the plaza, the one paralyzed by the Eye of the Feather.

Lost… is he dead?

A heavy weight settled in Mu Sichen’s stomach. Back then, he was only Level 1. He knew nothing of the town, he was out of energy, and he couldn’t protect anyone. He couldn’t offer a promise, only a choice.

Chi Lian and Cheng Xubo had chosen to follow him to the sanitarium. Together, they had fought and survived. But that crying player had wandered off into the dark. He had lasted three days alone, only to die in silence.

Mu Sichen pulled the sticker from his bag, a sharp pang of guilt and helplessness washing over him. He stared at the blurred image until his left eye throbbed. A crimson mist began to swirl in his vision.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

On the back of his eyelids, an image flickered to life. By holding the sticker, he was seeing through the “Self” it had once protected. He was about to see exactly what that player had experienced in his final moments.