As expected, he woke up in his room in a gray, sunless world. “The Ethereal Realm” he called it. For now, it appeared to be a darker world mirroring the physical world in appearances. It had mostly the same building structures and terrain, but missing traces and marks of living humans. Roaming creatures filled the entire realm, hostile, witless and grotesque. To put it simply, he entered a world that had very similar settings to the game he was developing in his previous life, he could earn experience and currencies when he defeated creatures, and he would lose Spirit Fragment, the general purpose currency, when he died or simply “exited” the dream. Something told him he might not be able to wake up should he die when his Spirit Fragment number had gone down to zero.

It was a relief to see that no spirit dwelled in this very house he could call home. Even more, the interior was visibly brighter than the outside world. He walked out the front door, and it seemed a gray fog that colored the world the way it was, was warded off by some kind of aura. As he looked around there were at least two houses in the community protected by similar auras. Yet somehow, the other auras still gave him a bit of a dangerous feeling.

He checked his status. He was almost at level 2, with 125 Spirit Fragments and 23 Vision Slivers. He had only one skill, the “core” of the main skill tree, one that empowered him to fight evil spirits and monsters, as well as enabled him to assign his skill points in three branches of skills - the Taoist Tree, Buddhist Tree and Confucianist Tree. 

This was the description of the core of the main skill tree: “Cultivator: Grants the potential to cultivate. Grants the power and potential to fight against the forces of evil and darkness.”

There was also an "unorthodox" minor skill tree, with skills that were inspired by elements from traditional Chinese folk lore. If he recalled correctly some of the skills could be quite helpful on those, but all these skills were locked.

Right this moment, he had access to only one branch of the skill trees: the Confucianist Tree. And from an intuition buried deep into his mind, to unlock the other two major trees, he needed to finish reading a classic book from the belief system. E-books wouldn’t work, it must be a physical book. He probably gained access to the Confucianist Tree because he had read The Analects of Confucius in full when he was in high school. He did not remember much from it, but indeed he had read it in full.

The minor skill tree also had three branches: Wugu Tree, aka Voodoo Tree, which would enable him to create, unleash or disable curses; Lu Ban Craft Tree, or the “Structure Builder” Tree, which included all sorts of skills relating to building houses, furniture, carvings and other small gadgets, even powerful structures; and finally Folk Ritual Tree, through which he could master all kinds of famous rituals mentioned in folklore. And to unlock these, he would need to get his hands on certain items first.

Now that he thought of it, he probably should have got a few books online first before going to sleep.

The air grew chillier as he walked out of the aura surrounding the house. Whatever Fengshui trick his father set up, it surely seemed to be working. But still, he needed to find and defeat spirits and creatures in this realm to earn Spirit Fragments. Something in the back of his mind kept reminding him.

The community was empty, no wandering creatures or spirits, yet. His father’s house seemed simpler in decor and grayer in color than it was in the real world, but structurally it remained the same.

He looked around. He could go down the road to the gate of the community and head out, but it would probably take him a while to reach anywhere significant; the other way would be to explore this very community. He needed to level up and even master his skill a little. He had died two times in the realm by now: other than that first time at the blade of that grotesque woman, was a time where he was ambushed by a large group of undead patients at the back of the hospital.

The neighbor’s house to his left seemed like a good place to start. It was close by, they had a huge shared lawn with some simple wooden fence as the line that split the land ownership. In this realm, it was a three-storey concrete house with some wooden structures. Unlike his father’s house, however, inside it there was basically no furniture, not even wallpaper or lights. All he could find on the first floor was a wide red wood chair in the living room.

He searched the kitchen, and found only the stone table, no cookware - no knife, no pan, not even a chopstick. He proceeded to check out the bedrooms, study and what looked like a home office, nothing he could use either.

With very little hope and expectation in mind, he proceeded onto the second floor through a flight of stairs, the wood panels on which were held by dangling wires from the third floor ceiling. And right on the platform around the corner, laid a short metal staff, roughly the length of a baton.

This was the first time Wu Xiaoming saw an item that he could use as weapon. So he just picked it up. When he focused on it, a panel popped up before his eyes - the same kind of panel in the secret project’s UI.

“Enchanted Short Staff: a simple metal short staff with simple engravings. ” Very simple description, yet no mention of attack power, status, elemental power, etc. But it would be expected, these numbers were simply ways to represent power levels of items and creatures inside video games; in other words, abstracted projection from real world properties into the worlds of the games.

But anyway, he could really use such an item right now. So far, he had been fighting the creatures using only his bare hands and legs, which was quite slow, not to mention dangerous. Now with a weapon in hand, he could explore this realm more freely and even aggressively.

As he moved into a hallway on the second floor, whispering voices came from the doors on both sides, bouncing off the walls. He slowed his steps, clutching his staff tighter.

The whispers coming from each door stopped when he got close enough, but restarted when he stepped away. They appeared to be intentionally leading Wu Xiaoming to go deeper into the hall. Even when Wu Xiaoming opened the doors, there was nothing behind them but empty rooms. Though, the art pieces remaining in this very floor did catch his attention: one wooden sculpture of an indigenous tribal warrior with exaggerated head size; one abstract human-shaped glass sculpture of a dancer; one very modern abstract painting with only shapes and lines. He studied all of them from a relatively safe distance, aside from their being there, nothing else weird stood out.

He was just a few more steps away from the abstract painting hung on the wall at the end of the hall before one door behind him clicked open without him doing anything. He immediately took a step forward and swung the staff behind him.

Alarms blared in his mind. He ducked to the side, with enough force that he rolled on the ground. A contorted pale face of a young man connected to a long “neck” made of liquid, moving paint hit the empty space where he was standing. Just as he tried to get up again, another pale face shot from the painting, aiming at him.

Wu Xiaoming had seen quite a few fights by this point, attacks like these might have appeared frightening at first but was still something he could handle. He rolled again on the ground, barely evading the attack of the colorful, elongated neck. The face at the top was that of a long haired woman, her eyes all white and no black at all, her facial expression frozen into an unsettling smile that only remained in the mouth, her teeth were crooked, dripping with dark, liquid paint. Wu Xiaoming swung the short staff with his right hand, striking the face from the back, as if bashing a person at the back of the head.

“Crack! ” This hit fractured large chunks of the paint “neck” and the skull-shaped paint behind the face. Red, yellow and green shards of solid paint flew off from the crack. Wu Xiaoming swung his short staff again, but hit nothing but air as the head retracted towards the painting. At the same time, two other heads shot at Wu Xiaoming, one of a crying child, one of a growling young man, both of whom had all white eyes and crooked teeth.

Wu Xiaoming dodged the crying child head, but had to block the head of the growling young man with the staff. 

“Bang!” The staff almost flew off his grip, forcing him to stumble several steps back, almost falling on his butt.

The two heads did not pursue Wu Xiaoming. Both floated in the air with their mouths open, spitting flurries of spikes made of paint at him. Wu Xiaoming jumped behind the corner. The paint spikes sunk and lodged in the wooden floor like flying daggers.

“Fuck.” Wu Xiaoming cursed. If only he had some ranged attack options or skills. It was not his first time encountering creatures with ranged attack abilities, this had probably caused his biggest headache so far.

The two heads shot a few more spikes at the corner behind which Wu Xiaoming was hiding. The concrete wall was much sturdier than wood and would not give out easily. Their eyes flashed red a few times, before long tentacles of colorful paint extended from their mouths and shot into the several rooms on the side.

The tentacles wrapped around the tribal warrior sculpture and the dancer sculpture, injecting their cracks and crevices with paint. Both sculptures twitched, moved and burst into action, charging at the position of the only human with blood and breaths in this house.