chapter 2

System: [Open derivative link?]

I selected [Yes] again.

System: [Derivative link access fee: 1,000 yuan. Confirm payment.]

I chose [Confirm].

This time, Jiang Ning gave up on saving me.

The system released a link, and I opened it.

I had assumed that after stripping the victim’s life bare, there could be no more sensational products to sell.

Clearly, we had been wrong.

The link tracked a relative of the dead boy—apparently Zhao Chong’s mother.

Her name was Zhang Hua. She was fifty-one.

Someone had been broadcasting details of her life ever since the year Zhao Chong died.

I scrolled through the posts.

His mother had once been a nationally honored senior teacher. Soon after her son’s suicide, she lost her job.

Then her husband divorced her because she could no longer “take care of the family.”

Wait.

Following the broad course of a bereaved mother’s life was one thing.

But these posts recorded intimate details, including her mental state.

Zhang Hua insisted that her son could never have killed himself. She believed he had been murdered.

Whenever she spoke to anyone, she repeated the same few sentences.

“My child would never commit suicide. He wouldn’t. He could never do that to me…”

People even mocked her as a nagging madwoman.

I kept reading.

One year after Zhao Chong’s death, the updates moved behind a paywall.

A prompt appeared: [Subscribe to paid content?]

Jiang Ning: “…Seriously?”

I chose [Yes].

For ten yuan per update, subscribers could watch a living woman’s pain unfold.

The most recent entry had been posted yesterday.

Jiang Ning was losing her mind. “No more spending! What kind of scam is this game?”

“All right,” I said.

The moment she left, I tapped [Subscribe to All].

It cost more than sixty thousand yuan.

By the time I finished reading everything, it was the middle of the night.

Then something occurred to me.

The first questionnaire screened for suitable “customers.” Most players would fail.

I had passed because I was exactly the kind of sucker willing to pay.

How funny. I had been diagnosed in childhood with deficient empathy and antisocial tendencies, yet somehow I had grown up to become an easy mark.

I had paid because I wanted to know whether the material was an elaborate script designed to immerse the player—or whether it was real.

That no longer mattered.

What mattered was that I could still hear Jiang Ning’s voice shrieking in my head.

“No more spending! What kind of scam is this game?”

She would tear me apart when she found out.

I spent another half a night thinking and finally discovered the perfect justification.

The next morning, I called her.

“Hello, Ningning? We need to report this to the police.”