Having lost his supernatural powers, the Faceless Man stood dazed on a street in the real world.
His mind was a complete blank. The joy of his return had been extinguished by a bucket of cold water, replaced by a surge of confusion and unease.
The night wind pierced through his thin clothing; his ornate robe possessed virtually no insulation against the cold.
He couldn't help but shiver, a sensation that quickly cooled his feverish mind.
He was no fool.
After a brief moment of disorientation, a logical theory quickly took shape.
Initially, he had been nothing more than an ordinary person, forced into the Supernatural Game. By clearing instances and completing missions, the game had bestowed supernatural powers upon him.
Eventually, he had even become a game manager.
His strength, his unique constitution, and even his featureless face—everything originated from the game's rewards.
Now that the Supernatural Game Show had suffered a devastating blow and the source itself was compromised—perhaps even collapsed—the players and managers who relied on that system found their powers becoming like trees without roots, naturally withering away.
The Faceless Man vaguely recalled that among the players who were already transcendents before entering the game, none had ever successfully been promoted to a game manager.
All managers, including himself, had started as ordinary people without supernatural power. There was likely some hidden rule involved in that.
But at this moment, he had no energy to delve into such things.
He was facing a far more immediate crisis.
A crisis of survival!
He had lost all his supernatural powers and his superhuman strength.
He was now no different from a penniless vagrant wandering the streets in the dead of winter.
The biting wind whipped up snow, lashing against his exposed skin. Dressed in thin fabric, he shook violently, his teeth chattering uncontrollably.
The night was deep. Though the lights of distant buildings flickered, they offered not a shred of warmth.
He felt more pathetic than the Little Match Girl. At least she had matches.
He didn't doubt for a second that if he couldn't find food and a warm place soon, he might not survive this frigid night. The hypothermia would kill him.
Worse yet, he had been trapped in the Supernatural Game Show for so long that his sense of time was completely warped.
He was unaccustomed to the pace of life and social rules of the real world.
Looking at the empty streets and buildings, he felt a profound sense of alienation.
Where should he go? What should he do? Who could he ask for help?
"Go home."
The thought made his heart twinge. He had once been a young man with a normal face. Now that so much time had passed, were his family members still alive? Did they still remember him?
And in his current state, how could he even face them?
He instinctively reached out to touch his face, but then stopped.
"No, I can't panic."
"First, I need to figure out where I am."
The Faceless Man forced himself to calm down. He looked around. The buildings were dense, and the streets were neatly planned. Although it was late and quiet, the scale and style suggested a major city.
"I don't know how far this is from my home."
His hometown was just a small city, nothing like the sight before him. He had likely been cast out to a very distant place.
For an ordinary person, leaving a city and crossing a Chaos Zone to reach another city was an incredibly difficult task.
Gritting his teeth, the Faceless Man endured the cold and weakness, stumbling toward the main road with streetlights outside the alley.
He wanted to find a passerby or an open shop to ask where he was, find some thick clothes, and beg for food.
However, as soon as he stepped onto the street, he immediately sensed something was wrong.
It was too quiet.
Despite it being late at night in winter with thick snow on the ground, this street—which looked like a main thoroughfare—was completely deserted.
Not only were there no pedestrians, but there wasn't even a single vehicle in sight. The shops on both sides were all tightly closed, their windows dark with no light showing through.
The streetlights stood alone, casting dim yellow circles on the snow, adding to the desolation.
The entire city was plunged into a strange, deathly silence, broken only by the occasional sound of a stray cat or dog.
The Faceless Man's own footsteps crunched loudly in the thick snow. The sound was amplified in the silence, becoming somewhat eerie.
A chill rose in his heart, colder than the night wind. This wasn't right. Even in the middle of a winter night, a city shouldn't be this empty.
"Could this city be experiencing a supernatural incident?"
"Do all the citizens stay locked inside at night, forbidden from going out?"
The Faceless Man quickened his pace, wanting to cross this street as quickly as possible. Perhaps things would be better in another district.
Just as he reached a crossroad and looked around—
Thud!
A dull pain erupted at the back of his head.
Someone had attacked him!
The force was perfectly controlled, enough to knock him unconscious without causing a serious injury.
The Faceless Man's vision went black, and the world began to spin. Without even a groan, his body slumped forward, crashing into the cold snow.
Before his consciousness faded completely, he managed to shift his gaze slightly. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of a figure standing in the shadows nearby.
The person was wearing a strangely styled robe that looked somewhat like a... priest?
Then, he lost consciousness entirely.
...
When he regained consciousness, the first thing the Faceless Man felt was the hard, rough ground. The air was heavy and stagnant.
He struggled to open his eyes. His vision blurred for a moment before gradually clearing.
He found himself in a closed room. It was large but had no windows, only a heavy, shut iron door.
The walls were dusty gray concrete, and a fluorescent light hummed overhead. A strange odor permeated the air.
He wasn't alone in the room.
There were about a dozen people, some sitting, some standing, some curled in corners. There were men and women, old and young. They wore everyday clothes, and most looked terrified and exhausted, with a hint of anger in their expressions.
The group was divided into several small clusters, maintaining a wary distance from one another. The atmosphere was heavy and oppressive.
As the Faceless Man struggled to sit up, he immediately felt the eyes of everyone in the room converge on him.
Some faces showed blatant disgust, while others held a mix of curiosity and fear.
A few people near him moved away as if avoiding a plague, putting as much distance between them as possible.
The Faceless Man instinctively reached up to touch his face.
A face without features was indeed terrifying. But now, the texture he felt was distinctly different. It was no longer smooth and flat like a mask.
He felt uneven skin, a strangely shaped bridge of the nose, and eyes that were extremely asymmetrical.
His faceless effect had been a supernatural power. With that power gone, the "faceless" state had failed.
His features had grown back. But the process seemed to have gone horribly wrong because the power had been abruptly and violently withdrawn.
He couldn't see his own face, but the reactions of those around him told him everything. Their eyes looked as if they were seeing a supernatural creature.
Even his own fingers could feel the lack of coordination. This hastily returned face was likely grotesque and terrifying.
Perhaps his features were displaced, like the face of a pseudo-human from a failed plastic surgery.
A surge of unspeakable bitterness and self-mockery welled up in his heart.
Going from the leader of the renegade managers to a disfigured vagrant, knocked out and locked up for no reason... the drop was simply too great.
The Faceless Man took a deep breath, suppressing his chaotic emotions. His resilience was decent, forged through his time in game instances.
Now was not the time for self-pity; he had to figure out the situation first.
He looked up, trying to make his gaze appear peaceful, even though his face might make it have the opposite effect.
"Everyone, I'm a normal human male."
"My face just looks a bit strange. I'm sick, and there's nothing I can do about it."
He spoke in a raspy voice, his tone carrying a hint of weakness and helplessness. However, because he hadn't interacted with normal people in the real world for so long, his words, combined with his face, made him sound like a pseudo-human who had just started mimicking a person.
"I just woke up and don't know anything."
"Where is this? Why are we locked up?"
He tried to make conversation, hoping to gather information from his fellow inmates.
The room remained silent. The others stayed wary; no one wanted to talk to a creature suspected of being a pseudo-human.
After a long while, a sorrowful-looking man in his forties sitting in the corner looked up at the Faceless Man.
Perhaps he was simply too frustrated to stay quiet, or perhaps he saw that while the newcomer looked strange, he wasn't aggressive. He lowered his voice and spoke.
"Young man, from your accent, you're not a local, are you?"
"This is Cuifeng City. It's a cursed place!"
Cuifeng City?
The Faceless Man's heart stirred. He had heard of this city; it was famous for technology and manufacturing, quite far from his hometown. He really had been thrown to a very distant place.
"Why are we locked up here?" the Faceless Man continued. He had been knocked out and dumped here, which had saved him from freezing to death for the moment, but he still needed to understand the situation.
At the mention of this, a clear flash of anger appeared on the sorrowful man's face. Several others nearby showed similar expressions.
"It's all because of those lunatics!" the sorrowful man blurted out, his voice rising with resentment.
A middle-aged woman next to him hurriedly tugged at his sleeve, signaling him to be quiet.
The man paused, then lowered his voice again.
"The local Investigation Bureau has lost its mind. They've gone and teamed up with that Radiant Church!"
"Lately, they've all gone crazy, forcing that church on everyone. They demand the whole city convert and participate in those bizarre rituals."
"Almost all work and production in Cuifeng City has ground to a halt. Word came down that they're centralizing all labor and resources to help the church complete some kind of ritual."
"Anyone who doesn't go, anyone who objects, or anyone who slacks off gets fined or detained at best. At worst, they end up like us, forcibly locked in this hellhole!"
Another woman leaning against the wall couldn't help but complain: "They said we'd only be released after the ritual is finished."
"Who knows how long that will take? I have elderly parents and children at home waiting for food."
"Exactly! It's lawless!"
"The church doesn't pay us; they just give out eggs. Can eggs pay off a mortgage?"
"My son's school is closed. They said everyone has to go participate in church activities."
For a moment, the room was filled with voices of agreement and complaint. But they soon fell silent again, seemingly afraid of being heard from outside.
The Faceless Man listened quietly, his heart sinking bit by bit. The Cuifeng City Investigation Bureau was forcing the Radiant Church on the populace. The entire city had stopped work to assist with a ritual. Objectors were being secretly imprisoned.
All this information linked together was incredibly strange. This was not how a normal city should function.
What made the Faceless Man break into a cold sweat was that he had just escaped from a forbidden zone; he wasn't even a citizen of Cuifeng City! He wasn't an objector, so why had that priest attacked him? Why was he locked up with these people?
There was definitely something fishy going on!
Leaning against the wall, the Faceless Man looked at the heavy iron door and then at the faces of the angry or uneasy people in the room.
Some hadn't realized the severity of the situation, while others had already sensed something was wrong. What exactly was the Radiant Church's ritual intended to do?
"Out of the wolf's den and into the tiger's mouth."
The Faceless Man felt utterly exhausted. His life was truly hard.
...
Cuifeng City, the Radiant Church.
Before a divine statue, the Bishop was praying devoutly. Inside the church, many simply dressed followers were quietly busy.
Everyone's movements were extremely gentle; no one dared to disturb the Bishop's immersive prayer.
At that moment, a priest in a black robe entered through a side door. His gaze quickly swept over the Bishop. With a slight hesitation in his step, he walked to a position about three paces behind the Bishop and waited with his head bowed.
The Bishop tilted his head slightly, indicating he was listening.
The black-robed priest took a half-step forward and reported: "Bishop, the final preparations for the Divine Descent Ceremony are complete."
"The sacrifices are all in place. The ceremony can begin at any time."
The Bishop continued to gaze silently at the statue. After a moment, he spoke.
"Very well. My Lord's glory shall descend upon this world as scheduled."
"Yes," the priest replied. He looked up at the Bishop's back, hesitated, and then asked in a low voice: "Bishop, if I may speak frankly."
"Our actions this time are massive, involving almost the entire city. Although the local Investigation Bureau is under our control, such a commotion will inevitably attract the attention of the Bureau headquarters..."
"The headquarters?" The Bishop interrupted him, his expression exceptionally confident and fanatical. "When my Lord descends upon this world, what will mundane matters matter in the face of His supreme power?"
The priest pursed his lips. Compared to the Bishop's blind confidence, his eyes held a bit more worry. After a few seconds of silence, the priest spoke again:
"Also, do we need to be particularly wary of that hidden existence causing the abnormal chaos in Cuifeng City?"
The Bishop was momentarily stunned but remained full of confidence. "Once my Lord descends, all worldly obstacles, all shadows and chaos, will dissolve before His might."
"What we must do now is ensure the ceremony is flawless and welcome the arrival of my Lord."
The unease in the priest's heart did not dissipate. Finally, he summoned his courage and asked, "Bishop, that hidden existence... who exactly is it?"
The Bishop did not answer immediately. The atmosphere became somewhat stagnant.
After a long while, the Bishop's solemn voice finally echoed slowly.
"The Far Side of the Moon."
"His full title is..."
"Great Sovereign of Absolute Yin and Extreme Evil, Black Heavenly Lord of Utmost Wickedness and Darkness."
Rate on N.U.
