Lord of the Myriad Worlds

Chapter 193: Spawn Point

Li Wei walked to the Ministry of Internal Affairs on foot, right into a heavy late-winter snowfall — the kind where fat flakes drift down like goose feathers.

By the time he arrived, he looked like a white-bearded snowman.

He wasn't wearing his Three-Star Noble Crest Armor, just his winter everyday clothes and a pair of standard-issue cotton shoes. Everything except his three-star dagger had been stored in the One-Star Resource Card — which meant he hadn't even brought enough water or food.

It was all to minimize wear and tear. Being upgraded to three-star quality didn't make equipment immune to harsh conditions.

Maintaining weapons and gear was still a significant ongoing expense — bow care, armor upkeep, sword oil, all of it added up.

Fortunately, given his current status, the Ministry of Internal Affairs provided a free maintenance kit.

When Li Wei arrived at the Ministry's courtyard, he found it had taken on a sharp, martial atmosphere. A row of fully armed soldiers stood guard, checking the Profession Cards of everyone who entered.

They were young, sharp-looking soldiers — not Mercenaries. They didn't carry that casual, devil-may-care air that Mercenaries tended to have.

So they were probably selected through the second-generation screening process.

"Lord Li Wei, have you completed your supply purchases? Per regulations, you will not be permitted to leave the Ministry of Internal Affairs from this point forward.""Understood."

Li Wei nodded. What came next would be the reshuffling of all players participating in the Pioneering Mission, along with the contract signing. To ensure maximum fairness and prevent collusion or bribery, this made perfect sense.

After all, the entire premise was built on guaranteeing the most basic principle of Humanistic Care.

Without that, it would be no different from a sect tournament — a bloodbath in some secret realm, a battle royale where only the last one standing wins.

The All-Heavens Lord Alliance simply didn't want that many casualties. Didn't want things to get that brutal.

For Li Wei, that was something to be deeply grateful for.

He was an ordinary person. Without these rules to support him, if he'd been thrown into some endless-loop world, he'd have ended up as a pile of nameless bones under the feet of some supreme genius in the very first arc. He'd never have had the chance to stand here as Rookie King.

Of course, that might feel deeply unfair to certain genuinely gifted individuals.

But there were ten thousand paths in this world. Dragons had their way, mice had theirs, and ordinary people deserved a road to walk as well.

Guided by attendants, Li Wei entered the room where the expansion pack had been screened the other day — and found the layout had changed completely.

What had been a cinema-style arrangement was now more like a basketball court.

The center was open space, surrounded on all sides by rows of wide, comfortable chairs — good for sitting, good for lying back. A dozen maids moved through the crowd, attending to the players who had already arrived.

Li Wei quickly spotted Hathaway, Little John, and Clyde — those three familiar faces, and no others. Everyone else was a stranger. No sign of Night Owl or any other Ministry of Internal Affairs higher-ups.

He picked a seat at random. A maid was already at his side with a warm towel to brush the snow from his clothes, followed by tea, a fruit platter, and snacks.

The service was impeccable.

Once Li Wei had settled in comfortably, a maid brought over a document that looked like a rolled parchment scroll.

"My lord, per regulations, please read the contents of the contract. If everything is satisfactory, please sign with your codename or given name."

Oh.

Li Wei read through it quickly and carefully — and found that the contents had nothing to do with the Pioneering Mission itself. Instead, it covered all manner of rights and benefits related to the pioneer territory once it was established. Things like a revenue split of up to fifty percent.

Nothing like what Hathaway had described.

Li Wei had no real choice in the matter, so he signed without hesitation.

After that, he ate and drank his fill, then closed his eyes and fell peacefully asleep. He had no interest in studying the other players. The Ministry of Internal Affairs had a total of twenty players joining the Pioneering Mission this time. Four of them would potentially become his "family members" — but there was no point in trying to figure out who.

By that afternoon, all twenty players had arrived. In practice, there was nothing to do — just sit around, doze, chat, and wait.

No one was permitted to leave, except to use the bathroom.

The following day at noon, Night Owl finally appeared, accompanied by the old gatekeeper and an unfamiliar middle-aged man.

These must be the three top figures of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

"Hathaway, Little John, Clyde, Li Wei — step into the magic formation and retrieve your Pioneering Cards."

Night Owl spoke calmly. All four stepped forward immediately, entering the slowly activating magic formation with a measure of tension. As each of them picked up their Pioneering Card, a stream of information materialized before their eyes.

[You have obtained temporary use rights to a Three-Star Pioneering Card. You are currently Seed Player No. 11 for this Pioneering Mission. This ranking is based on an assessment of your overall paper-record strength and is for reference purposes only.]

[Note: Seed Players serve two purposes. First, to prevent two stronger players from being assigned to the same branch storyline, which would cause destructive competition. Second, to ensure the safety of the Pioneering Card — as long as the Card remains intact, even if a player dies and the body cannot be recovered, losses can be minimized so long as the Card stays within a five-kilometer radius. If the Pioneering Card is seized at the outset, the branch storyline is considered a complete failure.]

[Note: Holding the Pioneering Card does not grant any additional buffs within the branch storyline. However, if you are a Seed Player and serve as Head of Household twenty or more times within the mission cycle while ranking first in Pioneering Points, when you become the Pioneer Lord, your pioneer territory will permanently receive a special enhancement magic.]

[Note: Your assigned map is Map 9.]

[Reminder: When the monthly settlement produces a Head of Household who is not you, the Pioneering Card will automatically transfer to that person.]

[Reminder: When you use the Pioneering Card to cover a fallen ally's safe retreat from the battlefield, you will randomly receive one item from their Resource Card as an inheritance.]

——

Well, well.

Li Wei immediately turned to look at Hathaway. He wasn't the only one — both Little John and Clyde were also glancing over at her with mild surprise. 'Sister, were you just making things up earlier?'

"What are you all looking at? Ten years ago I was just an unknown replacement who joined mid-mission and got eliminated in under a month. How the hell was I supposed to know any of this? And I didn't say anything wrong either!"

Hathaway's cheeks flushed slightly. Yes, she was a core player in the Ministry of Internal Affairs — but that didn't mean she had access to everything. When someone fed her half-baked information, who was she supposed to complain to? And if she passed it on and they believed her, was that her fault? She was a competitor just like the rest of them.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please remove your weapons and equipment and store them in your Resource Cards. Then please relax your bodies, close your eyes, and maintain a state of calm emptiness..."

The voice grew strangely distant toward the end. Li Wei felt no turbulence, no thundering of a magic formation, none of the chaotic, garish light pollution one might expect. When he opened his eyes again, he found himself lying inside a battered, filthy single-person tent.

He could immediately smell the thick, pungent odor of a body that hadn't been washed in years. He could even feel something crawling in his hair and through his clothes — tiny creatures called lice, throwing a party at his expense.

Li Wei desperately wanted to leap to his feet, but he held himself still.

He steadied his breathing and his heartbeat, sat up with careful, quiet movements, and flipped his hand — the One-Star Resource Card flashed, and his three-star dagger appeared in his grip. Then he slowly pulled open the tent's zipper and listened intently to his surroundings until he was certain the area was safe.

He crawled out of the tent and looked around. He was inside what appeared to be an underground parking lot. Everywhere around him were twisted, mangled cars, but every single one had been stripped clean.

Not far away were four more single-person tents, equally filthy. These, without question, were his "family."

As Li Wei's gaze swept across them, lines of information automatically appeared above each tent.

[Second Uncle: Li Guilin, 42 years old.]

[Second Aunt: Liang Yuzhi, 41 years old.]

[Older Cousin: Li Jiao, 22 years old.]

[Little Sister: Li Yue, 18 years old.]

——

It seemed their names had to match the Seed Player's. Li Wei's surname was Li, so they all had to be Li as well.

Li Wei was just about to scout the surrounding area when he heard the zipper on Second Uncle Li Guilin's tent being pulled open. The man emerged with a buckler in his left hand and a short blade in his right, just as alert as Li Wei.

When he spotted Li Wei, he visibly relaxed.

"Little Wei, ah — my fault. I was keeping watch last night but got terribly drowsy, so I caught a quick nap at dawn. How long have you been up?"

"Second Uncle, I just woke up myself. Nothing's moving out there."

Li Wei nodded. The competition had begun from this very moment. Every word they spoke, every action they took, had to fit within the logic of the storyline.

From Second Aunt's tent and his little sister Li Yue's tent came the soft sounds of rustling — they were changing into their equipment. They clearly couldn't tolerate having lice on them.

Though come to think of it, this world had been corrupted by out-of-control magic. Hadn't these blood-sucking lice mutated?

Li Wei turned the thought over in his mind, but still forced himself to suppress the urge to change clothes. Second Uncle Li Guilin was clearly enduring the same discomfort. He stood up and was about to say something when Li Wei quietly spoke first:

"Second Uncle, I'll go take a look outside. You stay here and keep watch — let Second Aunt and Little Sister sleep a bit longer."

"Good!"

A faint smile crossed Li Guilin's face, as though genuinely pleased. But in reality, Li Wei had just claimed the first small scouting plot point for himself.

Inside the tents, Second Aunt Liang Yuzhi, Little Sister Li Yue, and Older Cousin Li Jiao were all awake — but they were all busy changing into their equipment. Understandable enough: what if combat broke out at any moment?

Li Wei had already moved about twenty meters away, and in that short time had built a fairly clear picture of his surroundings.

First: judging by the light coming in from outside the parking lot, it was probably seven or eight in the morning. From the color temperature of the sunlight, the sun itself appeared largely unchanged.

He even spotted a patch of green in the distance — a few trees, looking no different from ordinary ones. That probably meant something: the magical corruption on this planet wasn't especially severe. Some plants had mutated, but perhaps the majority had only changed slightly.

Which would explain why the blood-sucking lice on them were still perfectly normal.

Second: the parking lot wasn't particularly large — more like a residential complex's lot than a large shopping center's. The banners on the walls used a script resembling English, but that wasn't a problem; Li Wei could read them at a glance with automatic translation. Nothing worth digging into there.

Third: the hoods of several cars in the lot had clearly been opened, as though someone had tried to repair or start them. And many of the fuel caps had been pried open — someone had been collecting gasoline.

Passing one car that still looked relatively intact on the outside, Li Wei opened the fuel cap and sniffed. Not a trace of gasoline smell — just heavy rust.

So the original technology of this world was almost certainly defunct.

Moving with light, quiet steps, Li Wei made his way to the parking lot's exit. Outside, it wasn't the dead silence he might have expected. In the distance he could hear birdsong, the hum of bees. A gentle breeze carried the air — temperature around ten degrees Celsius, the feel of early spring.

He pressed himself against the wall and peered outside.

What he saw was a field of ruins. Buildings had collapsed in every direction — some reduced entirely to rubble, others half-standing, a few isolated structures still intact but standing alone and forlorn.

The parking lot they were hiding in happened to be one of the surviving buildings.

So this wasn't a city. It was a modern small town — population somewhere between three thousand and five thousand.