Chapter 7: The Audience (1)

Zhou Yujing let out a long breath—part sob, part sigh, laced with overwhelming relief.

Her legs gave out, and she collapsed to her knees on the carpet.

It had only been a few minutes, but her whole body felt utterly drained, like she’d been through hours of torture. She had no strength left at all.

“Oh my god, I seriously thought he—he—he wasn’t going to make it!”

“Me too. I was scared out of my mind.”

The two girls beside her, both her age, were also drenched in cold sweat. Right up until just a minute ago, they had believed that the guy on screen was done for. Who could’ve expected such a dramatic reversal at the last second?

It had been exactly one full day since the incident.

The location: Earth (obviously), China (also obviously), in the living room of the Zhou siblings’ home.

A clunky, outdated CRT television sat atop a cabinet, its fuzzy screen broadcasting a scene from another world. A forest stretched across the display—withered trees, dead grass—and a long line of people trudging through it. They were all injured, some grievously so, but their wounds weren’t the most disturbing thing about them.

They wore tattered clothes made of coarse cloth, their hair was matted, their bodies caked with grime, but most horrifying of all was their skin. Every single one of them was covered in festering rot, both on their faces and across their bodies. It looked like an extreme, grotesque skin disease—enough to make anyone avert their eyes in disgust.

Only four of them looked remotely human: a pale-haired girl with striking beauty, a brown-haired girl, a man with spinach-colored hair, and a handsome young man with black hair—more boy than man, really. Though the brown-haired girl and the spinach-head man weren’t visibly wounded, both looked utterly exhausted, dragging themselves forward like clockwork toys. The black-haired youth was unconscious, carried on a stretcher by several of the rotting-skinned individuals, with no signs of waking anytime soon.

The situation didn’t look good. After all, those rotting people were far too bizarre to trust.

Still, it was a huge improvement from the earlier scene, when they’d been surrounded by monsters.

Zhou Yujing rubbed her temples, forcing herself to look away from the screen. As her taut nerves finally relaxed, exhaustion came crashing down on her like a tidal wave. 

She was absolutely spent. Ever since her brother had vanished in front of a crowd yesterday, she hadn’t rested, hadn’t eaten—just stared blankly at the TV. If her two classmates hadn’t come to check on her out of concern, she wouldn’t even have realized that an entire day had gone by.

“Little Jing, you’re exhausted. Try to sleep a little.”

“Yeah, I know. But easier said than done.”

Sleep? As if that were even possible.

In China alone, there were tens of thousands just like Zhou Yujing—people who hadn’t slept a wink, glued to their TVs or phones or computers, staring at any media they could access.

Everyone was in the same state.

One by one, their family members or friends had vanished into thin air. Then all the communication devices around the world had been hijacked by someone who claimed to be a “god.” That so-called god went on and on with cryptic nonsense, and then hell began.

As part of what he called a “special service granted by divine mercy,” he had, absurdly, initiated a livestream. A literal, global livestream.

Every television on Earth gained a new channel. Every video platform was flooded with new videos. Every streaming site was suddenly home to unfamiliar livestreams. Even blogs, big and small, were filled with mysterious pictures and short clips.

All of it revolved around those people the so-called god had transported to another world.

Anyone could operate the media panel, view any person they wanted to see, and witness their exact situation down to the finest detail.

That self-proclaimed god was livestreaming the fates of those victims to the entire planet. In real time, with zero delay.

This had long surpassed the limits of modern technology. It was no prank.

And the steady stream of corpses made that perfectly clear.

“Ugh, another one just showed up. It’s from our city too.”

One of the girls pulled out her phone and opened a news article. The moment she tapped the image, her face twisted in revulsion.

The photo showed a woman’s mangled corpse, her torso ripped open by a massive bite. The wound was far larger than what any terrestrial predator on Earth could inflict.

The first corpse had appeared three hours ago.

In a plaza in Yemen, a male body with most of its bones shattered suddenly materialized. Just under thirty seconds earlier, the livestream had shown that same poor soul slipping and falling off a cliff.

The second corpse came about ten seconds later—a girl’s body appeared in a Japanese classroom, sending both teachers and students into a panic. At that exact moment, the livestream had shown her being ambushed by a beast and having her throat torn out.

When someone died in that other world, their body would dissolve into smoke. Within thirty seconds, that smoke would reform on Earth, right at the spot where they had vanished.

Now, three hours since the first victim’s return, the global death toll was nearing a thousand. The dead were scattered across the world, and the ways they died were as varied as they were gruesome.

Zhou Yujing had been trapped in fear the entire time.

She kept her eyes locked on the livestream, on her brother, terrified that at any moment he’d be torn apart by some monster lurking in the shadows. When she saw him encounter the first half-human, half-lizard creature, her heart nearly exploded. But her brother’s reaction was far beyond anything she had imagined. Not only did he not panic, he even managed to fight back and kill it.

Then came an even more powerful humanoid monster. But somehow, he survived long enough to be rescued. Though to be fair, the rescue looked anything but reliable.

Whatever the case, her brother was still alive.

The place he’d been sent wasn’t the worst possible scenario, but it wasn’t far from it. And to survive the harrowing beginning, save two people, and kill multiple monsters… it was nothing short of a miracle.

And…

Zhou Yujing hesitated, then pulled up the TV menu and opened a new, unlabelled option.

A data table immediately appeared on the screen.

~~~~~

Zhou Yuhong
Kills: 4
People Rescued: 4
People Killed: 0
Total Score: 16
Rank: 18 / 99,034

~~~~~

“Oh, and to make things more interesting, why not add a leaderboard? Like class rankings after an exam~”

That’s how that so-called “god” had explained it.

And sure enough, he had implemented it. Anyone could look up anyone else’s stats, even pull up a full leaderboard.

It was pure sadism.

For those whose loved ones were trapped in another world, who the hell cared about kill counts or rankings? Just surviving was more than enough of a blessing.

But not everyone saw it that way.

In fact, only the victims’ families and friends truly cared about survival. For everyone else—the curious onlookers—this was the most thrilling, heart-pounding spectacle imaginable.

“Um… Little Jing?” one of her friends spoke hesitantly.

“…Yeah?”

“I don’t know if I should say this, but…”

She held out her phone, pointing at a clutter of new Weibo posts.

“Your brother’s actually pretty popular right now. He’s trending, along with a few of the top-ranked people.”

“Enough!”

Zhou Yujing’s scream finally erupted, echoing through the night.